HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
PROVO, UTAH
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2015
https://archive.org/details/artgreatwarOOgall
ART AND THE GREAT WAR
ART
AND THE GREAT WAR
By
ALBERT EUGENE GALLATIN
PAST CHAIRMAN COMMITTEE ON EXHIBITIONS, DIVISION OF
PICTORIAL PUBLICITY, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION. PAST CHAIR'
MAN COMMITTEE ON ARTS S’ DECORATION,
THE MAYOR’S COMMITTEE ONNATIONAL
DEFENSE, NEW YORK. AUTHOR OF
PORTRAITS OF WHISTLER,
dfc.
With One Hundred Illustrations
i
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON 6? COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, I919, BY E. P. DUTTON ii COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
X
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
SR.GHAM YOUNG uSs'ItV
PROVO, UTAH
DEDICATED
TO
MY MOTHER
PREFACE
THE purpose of this boo\ has been to chronicle the part played in the
Great W ar by painters, illustrators, etchers, lithographers and sculp '
tors, acting in these capacities. Their services were of great value and cer<
tainly deserved to be recorded. Speaking of the service rendered by the art'
ists, the Honorable Carter Glass, Secretary of the Treasury, has said:
“The whole civilized world owes thanks to the artists of America. Future
history would be incomplete without adequate recognition of the mighty
concrete values which the artists of the war wrung from the fabrics of their
dreams and devoted to the rescue of humanity from further bloodshed and
sacrifice”
I have endeavored to show what the artists of the United States, Great
Britain, Canada and France have done, both in depicting scenes at the
actual front and behind the lines, in recording the wor\ of the navies and
the aviation corps, as well as depicting scenes in the shipyards, munition
factories, industrial plants and wor\on the land. I have, too, tried to
show the important service rendered by the poster artist, the cartoonist
and the camoufleur.
' With regard to the illustrations appearing in this boo\, it has been my
endeavor to ma\e them record as many phases as possible of the Great War,
and to select only those possessed of artistic interest.
Already a considerable literature has come into existence concerning
the part artists played in the Great War; in my bibliography I have re'
corded such items as have come to my notice. Many of these items I have
consulted in the preparation of the following pages.
My best than\s are due to the British Bureau of Information for their
courtesy in supplying me with photographs of many of the British pictures.
I wish also to than\ Mr. Eric Brown, Director of the Fictional Gallery
of Canada, for his hindness in sending me desired information concerning
the Canadian War Memorials. To Mr. Paul G. Konody, who brought
this exhibition to 7\[ew T or\, I am indebted for giving me several photo '
graphs of the Canadian paintings. My than\s are also due to Mr.
Duncan Phillips for his courtesy in placing several negatives belonging
to him at my disposal, and to Mr. H. W. Sage for permitting me to re'
produce the paintings by Mr. Maxfield Parrish, of which he is the owner.
Bar Harbor, Maine, August, 1919
A. E. Gallatin
CONTENTS
Introduction
Art and the Great War — Former War Pictures — Britishand Canadian
Records — America’s Failure to Make Adequate Pictorial Records —
Art Museums and the War — American Federation of Arts — National
Arts Committee — Mr. Gallatin’s Letter to the President.
Chapter One: The United States of America 31*56
Division of Pictorial Publicity — Posters — Official Artists — Other Art'
ists in France — Records Made in America — War Pictures Painted in
America — Cartoons — Designation T argets — Sculpture — Military
Camouflage — Marine Camouflage — New York Committee on Arts and
Decoration — Art Committee of New York Liberty Loan Committee —
Allied War Salon — Victory Arch, New York; Victory Way in New
York.
Illustrations: The United States of America 57*127
Chapter T wo : Great Britain and Canada 131*143
The Excellent Records Possessed by Great Britain and Canada — Official
British Artists — Lithographs Depicting Great Britain’s Efforts and
Ideals — Work of G. Spencer Pryse and other Artists — Canadian War
Memorials; Official Australian Artists.
Illustrations : Great Britain and Canada 145*215
Chapter Three: France 219*228
Work of Steinlen and Forain — Lucian Jonas and Henri Farre — Other
War Pictures — Posters.
Illustrations : France 229*277
Illustrations: The Netherlands 279*283
285*288
Bibliography
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
%
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
George Luks The "Blue Devils” Marching Down Fifth Avenue. Oil. Reproduced in color. Frontispiece
George Luks Peace Celebration in "New T or\. Oil
Spencer B. Nichols The Tanker. Oil
Edwin H. Blashfield Carry On. Oil
Samuel J. Woolf First Aid Station at Seicheprey. Oil
John C. Johansen The Launch of the 'Watonwan. Oil
Henry Reuterdahl The Destroyer Patrol. Oil
Henry Reuterdahl The Return of the Victory Fleet. Drawing
Childe Hassam Early Morning on Fifth Avenue, May, 1917. Oil
George Bellows Murder of Edith Cavell. Lithograph
George Bellows Massacre at Dinant. Oil
Maxfield Parrish Design for the Red Cross. Oil
Maxfield Parrish Design for the Red Cross : Detail. Oil
Maxfield Parrish Design for the Red Cross: Detail. Oil
Harry E. Townsend A Wounded Tan\. Drawing
George Harding An A merican'French Conference in a Wine Cellar; Chdteau'Thierry. Drawing
Walter J. Duncan Cold Nights Coming On. Drawing
Ernest Peixotto Troops Leaving Esnes, September 23, 1918
Harvey Dunn Kamarad — The Sniper. Drawing
J. Andre Smith On Hill 204 — Southwest of Chateau'Thierry. Drawing
William J. Aylward Troops Waiting to Advance at Hatton-Chatel, Meuse — S. Mihiel Drive. Drawing
Wallace Morgan Americans Mopping Up in Cierges. Drawing
Wallace Morgan Feed a Fighter. Poster
Joseph Pennell Ready to Start. Lithograph
Joseph Pennell Making Armor Plate ( England ) . Lithograph
Joseph Pennell That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth. Poster
Boardman Robinson The Serb. Drawing
Vernon Howe Bailey The Superdreadnoughts 7s lew York and Arizona. Lithograph
Thomas Hastings Victory Arch, Now T or\
Paul Manship Jeanne dA rc Medal
Mahonri Young One of the “Buffaloes.” Bronze
C. B. Falls Boo\s Wanted. Poster
Adolph Treidler Farm to Win "Over There.” Poster
W. T. Benda For Motherland and Freedom. Poster
Henry Raleigh Halt the Hun! Poster
George Illian Keep it Coming. Poster
George Wright Another Ship — Another Victory
GREAT BRITAIN
William Orpen A Grenadier Guardsman. Oil. Reproduced in color
William Orpen Horses Near Aubigny. Drawing
William Orpen
William Orpen
Muirhead Bone
Muirhead Bone
Muirhead Bone
William Orpen Bringing in a Wounded Tommy. Drawing
William Orpen The Gas M as\. Drawing
The Big Crater, T^o. 2. Oil
South Irish Horse. Drawing
A British Tan\. Drawing
Muirhead Bone The Bridge of a British Merchant Ship at Sea. Drawing
Muirhead Bone H. M. S. Vindictive after Zeebrugge. Drawing
A Shipyard Scene. Lithograph
Ready for Sea. Lithograph
James McBey Entry of the Allies into Jerusalem. Drawing
James McBey Water Transport. Drawing
James McBey Detraining a Howitzer by Moonlight. Drawing
C. R. W. Nevinson That Cursed Wood. Oil
C. R. W. Nevinson After a Push. Lithograph
C. R. W. Nevinson The Road from Arras to Bapaume. Lithograph
C. R.W. Nevinson Swooping on a Taube. Lithograph
John Lavery A Coast Defense. Oil
Paul Nash Sunrise: Inverness Copse. Drawing
Eric Kennington A Lewis Gunner of a Yorkshire Regiment. Drawing
Charles Pears Maintaining Oversea Forces. Lithograph
Edmund Dulac Poland, a Ration. Lithograph
Charles H. Shannon The Re'birth of the Arts. Lithograph
Frank Brangwyn The Loo\out. Lithograph
Frank Brangwyn Put Strength in the Final Blow. Poster
G. Spencer Pryse The Fall of Ostend. Lithograph
G. Spencer Pryse The Wayside Crucifix — Belgium, 1914. Lithograph
G. Spencer Pryse The Only Road for an Englishman. Poster
G. Spencer Pryse The Retreat of the Seventh Division and Third Cavalry on Y pres. Lithograph
G. Spencer Pryse Belgium, 1914
Jacob Epstein The Tin Hat. Bronze
CANADA
Norman Wilkinson Canada’s Answer
A. J. Munnings Horses Watering T^ear Domart
D. Y. Cameron Flanders from Kemmel
Leonard Richmond Canadian Railway Construction in France
P. Wyndham Lewis Canadian Gunpit
FRANCE
J. L. Forain The Prisoner. Lithograph. (From a poster)
J. L. Forain Forward! Lithograph
J. L. Forain What ? Not Even a Child ! Lithograph
J. L. Forain — It is a T^eutral
— Ah ! ... I Breathe. Lithograph
Th. A. Steinlen L’Aisne Devastee. Poster. Reproduced in color
Th. A. Steinlen Aid to the Wounded. Lithograph
Th. A. Steinlen Under the Boot. Lithograph
Th. A. Steinlen Concert en Grange. Poster
Th. A. Steinlen La Triennale. Poster
Th. A. Steinlen Leaving the German Jail. Lithograph
Lucien Jonas A Volunteer. Lithograph
Lucien Jonas Portraits of General Pershing. Drawings
Pierre Auguste Renoir Portrait of His Son, Wounded in the War. Drawing
Hermann Paul The American Hymn. Lithograph
Benito For the Beautiful Land of France. Lithograph
Benito The Conquerors of the Marne. Lithograph
Benito The Heart of America. Lithograph
Henri Farre Bombing bjancy. Oil
Antonin Mercie Plaquette de la Fraternite des Artistes. Gilded bronze
“Sem” Pour le Dernier Quart d’Heure. Poster
“Sem” Pour le Triomphe Souscrivez a VEmprunt TJational. Poster
Georges Scott Pour le Drapeau ! Pour la Victoire ! Poster
Abel Faivre On les Aura! Poster
Abel Faivre L’Or Combat Pour La Victoire. Poster
Adolphe Willette Joumees Girondines. Poster
Francisque Poulbot — ?J’oublie pas de souscrire . . . pour la Victoire! . . . etle retour! Poster
THE NETHERLANDS
Louis Raemaekers Cleansing the Temple. Lithograph
Louis Raemaekers The American Army in France — The Relief. Pencil and water'color
ART AND THE GREAT WAR
INTRODUCTION
N the prosecution of the Great War, and bringing about
ultimate victory, the artists of the United States and the
allied countries played a very important part. This was the
first war artists, as such, were used by their governments,
and art became a powerful weapon.
To the artists was intrusted the extremely important task of organ-
ising the camouflage corps of the armies, and on their shoulders also fell
the work of developing the art of marine camouflage, both of which tasks
they did with marked success. In the recruiting of troops and in the
raising of government loans, as well as for many other purposes, in-
cluding relief, the artists through their posters rendered a very notable
service. The cartoonist was a powerful moulder of public opinion and
it has been truthfully said of M. Louis Raemaekers, the great Dutch
artist and cartoonist, that “no oration, no literature, no art, has brought
the real meaning of the war home so convincingly” as his cartoons. As
will be brought out in the following pages, the artist also contributed
in many other ways towards bringing the war to a successful conclusion.
Somewhere I have come across the statement that James Gillray,
the English caricaturist, and Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg were
sent to Flanders in 1793 to commemorate the military exploits of the
Duke of York. The latter artist was at one time court painter in France
and afterwards, going to England, was elected a member of the Royal
Academy. Garrick employed him to design scenery and he also painted
several works dealing with military and naval episodes. Aside from this,
as far as is known, the Great War was the first to be officially recorded
by artists. This innovation is one that the historian and posterity will
certainly welcome, for pictures, far more adequately than the written
word, were capable of recording the great conflict.
The Great War was waged to a large extent with explosives and ma-
chinery— very different from the individual combat which the soldier
of ancient Greece engaged in when he went into battle. It is a far cry
from the athletic figures of Greek warriors on the frieze of the Parthe-
non to Mr. C. R. W. Nevinson’s painting which shows three men work-
ing a mitrailleuse down in a trench, barbed wire silhouetted against the
sky. These three men are a part of their machine.
The hideousness and horror of modern trench warfare is also far re-
moved from the pageantry and splendor of warfare in the Middle Ages
— it is vastly different also from the comparatively picturesque and
open warfare of the Napoleonic epoch. War pictures of to-day have al-
most no roots in the past; the pictorial recorder of modern warfare has
had no sign-posts to guide him. For one thing, for the first time land-
scape formed an important feature of the war picture.
Leonardo da Vinci made many designs for fortifications and vari-
ous implements of warfare; those familiar with Ravaisson-Mollien’s
folio volumes of facsimiles of Leonardo’s manuscripts will remember
that he even made a design for an aeroplane. Whatever our own opinion
may be in the matter, we must remember that Leonardo always main-
tained that he had attained greater excellence as an engineer than as a
painter or a sculptor, and it is in this character, rather than as an artist,
that his services were of value to his country. The same is true of
Michelangelo, who was possessed of similar accomplishments. The
battle pictures of these two artists have perished.
One recalls the decorative and gorgeous battle pictures of Paolo
Uccello and Raphael’s Battle of Constantine. Such gay panoramas as
these are very different from the trench warfare of the Great War.
Diirer was also interested in depicting military matters; a work by him
printed in Nuremberg in 1527 contains many engravings of fortifica-
tions, cannon and various military objects, which he drew on the wood.
Velasques’s Surrender of Breda is the greatest military picture ever
painted.
The horrors of war were truthfully and graphically set down by Cal-
lot and by Goya in their powerful etchings. The great Russian painter of
warfare, Verestchagin, also completely stripped war of its glamor.
The paintings of Gerard and Gros are simply glorifications of Na-
poleon; as transcripts of actual warfare they are almost valueless. The
lithographs of Charlet and Raffet are full of authority. Afterwards
in France came the paintings of the Franco-Prussian War by Detaille,
who is always rather cold, and by de Neuville — mere anecdotes. Of
the studio-painted, and as regards detail, miniature-like paintings, of
Meissonier, one agrees with Courbet (or was it Degas?) who said that
everything is of steel excepting the cuirasses. It is most curious that
such a military people as the French should have failed to get this en-
thusiasm for things military into their art.
The greatest possible credit is due the British and Canadian Govern-
ments, as well as to the Commonwealth of Australia, for the splendid
manner in which they went about obtaining pidtorial records of the
war. They sent their best artists to the front and these artists covered
all phases of the war in a most thoroughgoing and masterly fashion.
France also had her official artists and like Great Britain and Canada is
to have a permanent war museum of pictures. That the government of
the United States did not realise the great importance of this work is cer-
tainly most regrettable and a serious reflection upon the vision and in-
telligence of those responsible. A few of our illustrators, it is true, were
despatched to France to make a pictorial record of our military activi-
ties, but their drawings, for the most part, are rather commonplace.
Alongside of the paintings and drawings by Sir William Orpen, Mr.
Nevinson, Messrs. John and Paul Nash, the drawings by Messrs. Bone
and McBey, the paintings by Sir John Lavery and all the rest of the
able works executed for the British and Canadian Governments, they
appear very feeble, indeed. Why were not such of our painters as Messrs.
Childe Hass am, Sargent, George Luks, George Bellows, William J.
Glackens, Gifford Beal and Rockwell Kent in France recording the
life of our men and their part in the great conflict? And Mr. John C.
Johansen to paint the great docks and railway systems built by the
Engineer Corps? It was the purpose of the War Department not to send
painters, but illustrators who had the capacity for recording impress
sions and whose work was suitable for reproduction in the press. This
was a mistake. Even as drawings suitable for publication in the press the
pictures were not a success, as is shown by the fact that out of one
hundred and ninety-six drawings offered to the magazines only fifty-one
were accepted for publication.
Why was not Lieutenant-Commander Henry Reuterdahl with
our overseas fleet? And Mr. Paul Dougherty, the famous marine
painter, both of whom undoubtedly would have painted some stirring
pictures of the dangers and tragedies and heroism attending those who
fought the cowardly monsters which infested the deep?
America has no pictorial record of the wonderful achievements of
her navy during the Great War. It was the same in the Spanish- Amer-
ican War, of which there is not a single record of the navy’s many
achievements, some of them of a spectacular nature. Every foreign coun-
try knew the value of propaganda and made particular efforts to tell their
people what their working forces were doing. Our Navy Department
has recorded nothing at all. It looks very much as if the authorities
wished to keep the work of the navy anonymous.
Admiral Sims and the chairman of the Committee on Public Infor-
mation both made strong recommendations to the Navy Department
that Lieutenant-Commander Reuterdahl be sent abroad to depict the
activities of our fleet. As a matter of fact, he entered the navy for this
express purpose. Admiral Sims knew of Lieutenant-Commander Reu-
terdahl’s long association with the navy and of his ability to portray
her achievements. He also, doubtless, realized what an inspiration to
the youth of the land a series of paintings by this artist would be if hung
[-4]
in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Secretary of the Navy, how'
ever, apparently thought otherwise. It makes one sad to consider this
amazing situation.
Why, too, has our government no plans for a museum in which to
house pictorial records of the war? Even Australia has done this. The
National Museum at Washington has made a collection of posters, but
that is all. Possibly the drawings made by our official artists may also
be deposited there, but even this is undecided.
Credit is due to the Library of Congress for their foresight in asserm
bling a large and representative collection of posters and cartoons on
the war. In this collection are posters issued by the American Govern'
ment for recruiting, relief and for the special purposes of the Depart'
ments of Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, State, Navy, Treasury and
War, many hundreds in number. Included also are the posters issued by
the Food Administration, the War Finance Committee and many other
organizations. Very comprehensive collections of broadsides, posters,
cartoons and lithographs from Great Britain, Canada and France have
also been made, as well as smaller ones from Italy, Germany, Poland and
Russia. Many special exhibitions have been shown, including the car'
toons of M. Raemaekers, the lithographs of M. Lucien Jonas, the set
of lithographs depicting Great Britain’s efforts and ideals, and various
posters and medals. Mr. Charles Moore, chairman of the National
Commission of Fine Arts, had much to do with the collecting of this
material. It is also a pleasure to note that the New York Public Library
has formed a splendid collection of about two thousand war posters,
very comprehensive in its scope.
A word here regarding the influence of the war on the various art
museums of the country may not be out of place. No museum in the
country rendered such a notable service to the community as the Art
Institute of Chicago, where the attendance was much larger than dun
ing peace times; one million, one hundred and thirty'two thousand
persons visited their galleries during 1918. One hundred and twenty'six
war meetings of various kinds were held within the building, numerous
exhibitions during the course of the war helped to give an understand-
ing as to what was taking place in Europe, students and instructors in
the Art School gave much of their time to the making of posters, the
Middle West Department of the Division of Pictorial Publicity was
organized at the Art Institute, whose steps were a scene of almost daily
meetings and where thousands of people met in connection with vari-
ous “drives.” A notable collection of the best of the war posters was
made by the Institute; it cooperated with the government in every
possible way in helping to win the war. This alliance of art with the
state and the people, which finds its most perfed: expression in France,
should be continued, for art is not exclusively for the connoisseur. That
the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art took a firm stand
against art connected with the war entering the portals of this institu-
tion will always arouse curiosity. The attendance at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in 1918 was only a little more than half that of the Art
Institute of Chicago — and the population of New York is about double
that of Chicago.
Great credit is due Mr. John W. Beatty for his enterprise in obtain-
ing many of the chief exhibits contained in the Allied War Salon which
was held in New York in December, 1918, for the Carnegie Institute of
Pittsburgh, of which he is the Director of Fine Arts. It is a pleasure also
to pay a tribute to the admirable work done by Mr. Duncan Phillips
in agitating the value of art to the government in the prosecution of
the war, for his work in helping to get up the Allied War Salon and for
his cooperation with the American Federation of Arts in arranging
numerous exhibitions of war pictures, which were shown throughout
the country. In addition to arranging these ambulant exhibitions, which
did much to stimulate patriotism throughout the country, the American
Federation of Arts organized a strong committee on war memorials,
of which the Honorable William H. Taft is honorary chairman,
Mr. Charles Moore is chairman and Mr. Robert W. de Forest is vice-
chairman. Miss Leila Mechlin, the secretary of the Federation, who
was very active in arranging the exhibitions of war pictures, is secret
tary of this committee. In the first chapter of my book I have noted
the admirable work done by Mr. Charles Dana Gibson and Mr. F.
D. Casey in organizing the poster artists of the country.
At about the time that this book is to go to press there comes the an-
nouncement that the newly formed National Arts Committee has sent a
number of portrait painters to Paris to paint many of the military and
civil leaders of the Great War. This is indeed good news. The Amer-
ican Peace Commissioners have endorsed the projedt, of which Mr.
Henry White is acting as honorary chairman.
This group of portraits, which is to be presented to the nation and
deposited in the new National Portrait Gallery in Washington, is being
painted by Messrs. Joseph De Camp, Edmund C. Tarbell, John C. Jo-
hansen, Douglas Volk, Irving R. Wiles, Charles S. Hopkinson, Miss
Cecilia Beaux and Jean McLane [Mrs. John C. Johansen]. Mr. Jos-
eph De Camp is painting the Peace Table.
Mr. Herbert L. Pratt is secretary and treasurer of the National Arts
Committee, which includes in its membership Messrs. J. P. Morgan,
Henry C. Frick, Robert W. de Forest and Mrs. E. H. Harriman. Pa-
triotic citizens in various cities besides New York have also contributed
towards the expenses of this undertaking.
A few days previous to the announcement of the National Arts Com-
mittee [29th May, 1919] the following letter was sent by the writer
to the President of the United States, adting on behalf of a number of
artists and persons interested in art:
“ A group of Americans who realized the importance of art as a
national asset, and who are deeply stirred by the example of Great
Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Australia in sending their best
artists to the front to create permanent and national records of the
war, its heroism, sacrifice and suffering, have deputed me to send
you this letter.
We deplore the fad: that thus far very little has been done to
bring before present and future generations of Americans the great
and inspiring part our country played in the war. We urge that a
number of our leading artists be sent abroad immediately to paint
from actual observation our historic battlefields, portraits of our army
and navy leaders, of our soldiers, the life of our Army of Occupa-
tion on the Rhine, the scenes of war, the stupendous results of our
efforts in engineering, railway building, hospital equipment, shipping
and all other branches of our war adivity.
We also regret deeply that we have missed the opportunity of
gaining the services of our greatest painter, Sargent, who has just
painted for the British Government a monumental war canvas.
It may be too late to paint incidents of warfare, but modern war
consists not merely of fighting. There are still immense fields to be
covered if immediate ad:ion be taken. We appeal to you, therefore,
for approval of such a projed:. The inspiring Canadian example proves
that a national memorial of this kind can be created without the
financial, though not without the moral and practical support of the
government. The success of such a projed: would mean the presenta-
tion to our government of the finest kind of a war memorial.”
At my suggestion the National Arts Committee agreed, upon certain
conditions, to broaden the scope of its activities and to have at least a
few pictures painted of the description that I suggested in my letter to
the President. Unfortunately, however, I was unable to bring this about.
[,8]
85605
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
irching Down Fifth A vent
ART AND THE GREAT WAR
♦
CHAPTER ONE
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ITH reference to the inspiring opportunity
given to the painters, sculptors, illustrators and
cartoonists of the country by the war, one
critic has written: “Never since the Middle
Ages, when the church taught its lessons by
means of pictures to people who could not
read the written word, has art been called
upon to serve in so many ways.” It is gratify-
ing to know that the artists of America came forward with an eagerness
to serve the country that was not excelled by any other group. More
than that, all of the drawings and posters which they made for the
government were presented, as gifts. It is a pleasure to pay a tribute
to the splendid spirit of patriotism shown by these men.
The Division of Pictorial Publicity of the Committee on Public In-
formation, of which committee Mr. George Creel was chairman and
the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the
Navy were members, was established shortly after America’s entrance
into the Great W ar. This was done at the urgent request of Mr. Charles
Dana Gibson and a body of American illustrators. Mr. Gibson was
[33]
chosen to be chairman of the Division of Pidtorial Publicity; his asso-
ciates were Mr. F. D. Casey, who was vice-chairman, and Messrs.
F. G. Cooper, Charles B. Falls, Louis Fancher, Henry Reuterdahl,
C. D. Williams and Robert J. Wildhack.
The function of the Division of Pictorial Publicity consisted in supply-
ing the various departments, bureaus and commissions of the govern-
ment with every form of pictorial publicity that they desired. Member-
ship in it was unlimited; any individual who expressed a desire to carry
out such work as was required by the government automatically be-
came a member.
The headquarters of the Division were at 200 Fifth Avenue, New
York, with sedtional branches in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.
The New York division met once a week, at which meetings requests
from the government for various designs were read. The drawings sub-
mitted were passed upon by the chairman and his associates and then
sent to Washington for final approval. That the officials in Washing-
ton had the privilege of selecting the designs, instead of the artists, was
of course most unfortunate. This most unfair system accounted for
the issuing of several thoroughly inartistic Liberty Loan posters — the
choice of the Treasury officials.
From its inception on 17th April, 1917, until the 15th of November,
1918, the Division of Pictorial Publicity made for the government and
various patriotic societies and committees, fifty-eight in number, seven
hundred posters, two hundred and eighty-seven cartoons and four hun-
dred and thirty-two cards and designs for newspaper advertising. Be-
sides the various departments of the government, these designs were
used by such organizations as the Red Cross, the Shipping Board, the
American Library Association, the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A. and the
Salvation Army.
As a matter of record, the names of the associate chairmen and the
executive committee are here appended:
Associate
HERBERT ADAMS
E. H. BLASHFIELD
RALPH CLARKSON
CASS GILBERT
OLIVER D. GROVER
Chairmen
FRANCIS C. JONES
ARTHUR F. MATHEWS
JOSEPH PENNELL
EDMUND C. TARBELL
DOUGLAS VOLK
Executive Committee
F. G. COOPER
N. POUSETTE-DART
I. DOSKOW
F. E. DAYTON
C. B. FALLS
A. E. GALLATIN
RAY GREENLEAF
MALVINA HOFFMAN
W. A. ROGERS
HENRY REUTERDAHL
JACK SHERIDAN
H. SCOTT TRAIN
H. D. WELSH
J. THOMSON WILLING
H. T. WEBSTER
WALTER WHITEHEAD
II
Owing to the efforts of the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the posters
issued by our government in time became very creditable. In the be-
ginning of the war our posters were extremely crude and inartistic and
consequently made but a small appeal. This was owing to the fact that
the various departments of the government, with an appalling igno-
rance of all things artistic, merely gave orders to commercial firms of
lithographers to turn out posters and other forms of pictorial publicity,
without thought of the artists at all.
Innumerable posters were required by the government for Liberty
Loan, War Savings Stamp, Red Cross and other “drives,” for recruiting
purposes, to urge the conservation of certain foods, as well as coal, to
speed up shipbuilding and for dozens of other purposes. An anonymous
author has written: “To build morale, to spiritually awaken the nation,
[35]
to stimulate concentrated effort, to quicken every war activity, the
government employed art in the form of pictorial publicity for the first
time and on a grand scale. This campaign may be described as ‘The
Battle of the Fences.’ ”
The artists went to the government and offered their services, and
without recompense, and it was only after considerable opposition
that their services were accepted.
The best men in the country were mobilized by Mr. Gibson’s and
Mr. Casey’s committee, and considering that we had but few real poster
artists in this country, owing to the fact that technical schools in Amer-
ica are almost non-existent, the results obtained by many of these men
were excellent.
Twenty years ago the artistic poster enjoyed a wide vogue in Great
Britain, in France and in this country. Many elaborate books were is-
sued on the subject, magazines devoted to posters were published, large
exhibitions were arranged, and hundreds of collections were formed.
Then the interest in posters died out. But many of these lithographs
will always hold an honorable place in the portfolios of the amateur and
the museum. In France the lithographs used for advertising purposes
which were drawn by Toulouse-Lautrec and M.Steinlen rank among
the most notable graphic work of their time. Cheret, Mucha and
Grasset also produced work which will live. In England notable work
was done by Mr. William Nicholson, Mr. James Pryde and Aubrey
Beardsley, while many extremely fine posters were executed in Amer-
ica, notably by Messrs. Maxfield Parrish and Edward Penfield. Then
the Great War came along and with it the renaissance of the poster.
Once more, as in the Middle Ages, art became the property of the peo-
ple, as it should be, and not ticketed specimens in a tomb-like museum.
The effective poster is the simple poster, and one that tells its story
in unmistakable terms. It must, too, have been drawn by a master crafts-
man, one with a knowledge of design, a proper feeling for color and
power of conception. It is because possessed of those qualities that
the Books Wanted poster of Mr. C. B. Falls ranks with the best of our
war posters. Mr. Falls designed several other excellent posters, include
ing three entitled The Camp Library is Yours, New York Decorators'
Fund, and E-E-E-Yah-Yip.
On the whole, I should say that the most notable series of posters de-
signed by one man in America are those of Mr. Adolph Treidler. All
of his lithographs are conceived and drawn in exactly the manner true
posters should be made. The poorly drawn sketches by Messrs. How-
ard Chandler Christy and Harrison Fisher and others of our popular
illustrators, were not posters at all. Neither was the altogether absurd
Greatest Mother in the World “poster.” It is possible, of course, that
such designs as these appealed to certain intellects, and thereby served
their purpose. Among Mt.Treidler’s many very successful posters may
be singled out his twenty-four sheet lithograph urging the purchasing of
war savings stamps, which shows a gun in action, Have You Bought
Your Bond? Help Stop This, Farm to Win and Make Every Minute
Count for Pershing.
None of our posters have been more thoroughly artistic than those
drawn by Mr. W. T. Benda. His posters, in color, issued to stimulate
recruiting among the Poles in this country, are very handsome compo-
sitions; his simpler drawings, such as that made for the Y.W.C A., en-
titled Stand Behind the Country’s Girlhood, are charming and strong
drawings.
Mr. Henry Raleigh, with his Hunger, Blood or Bread, and Halt the
Hun posters produced three of the best of our war posters, drawings full
of strength and character. The poster entitled Keep it Coming, by Mr.
George Illian, was also a notably fine drawing, as was Mr. Wallace
Morgan’s Feed a Fighter. Mr. Joseph Pennell’s statue of liberty poster
was also excellent, as were two others by him, of shipping subjects, en-
largements of his lithographs.
Effective posters were also drawn by Messrs. Henry Reuterdahl,
Edward Penfield, Charles Livingston Bull, Charles Dana Gibson,
[37]
Albert Sterner, F. Walter Taylor, Fred J. Hoertz, Walter H.
Everett, George Wright, Hibbard V. B. Kline, Jonas Lie, F. Luis
Mora, Howard Giles, W. D. Stevens, Charles Sarka, H. Devitt
Welsh and several other artists. Mr. Welsh, it may be mentioned, was
Art Director of the Committee on Public Information during the au-
tumn of 1917.
For the Victory Liberty Loan, Mr. L. A. Shafer designed an excel'
lent poster, showing an American destroyer coming to the rescue of a
transport, about to be torpedoed.
The navy had its own organization for pictorial publicity, conducted
by the United States Navy Recruiting Bureau, in New York. During
the entire war Lieutenant-Commander Henry Reuterdahl served as
artistic advisor. Many of the navy’s most striking and successful draw-
ings and paintings used for recruiting purposes were executed by him.
It is worth noting that the navy was the first department of the gov-
ernment to issue any posters. Lieutenant-Commander Reuterdahl was
attached to the United States Navy Recruiting Bureau in March, 1917,
and at once set about getting good posters for the navy. Acting as a com-
mittee of one, he wrote to about fifty of our prominent artists asking for
poster designs, and a few days before this country entered the war the
navy actually had some of their first posters on the lithographic stone.
Thanks to the foresight of Lieutenant-Commander Reuterdahl, the
navy, as usual, was ready.
The marine corps also acted independently, but, like the navy, ob-
tained their posters from the same artists who contributed to the Divi-
sion of Pictorial Publicity. A number of excellent posters were also is-
sued by the Publications Section of the United States Shipping Board
Emergency Fleet Corporation, for display in shipyards and industrial
plants. These posters had the desired effect of making many thousands
of workmen feel the patriotic necessity of close cooperation with the
government and in speeding up their work.
It is interesting to note that Mr. Brangwyn and M. Raemaekers both
[38]
made designs for use by the United States Navy. Excellent ones were
also drawn by Messrs. Albert Sterner, George Wright and James
Daugherty. For a hoarding in Chicago, Mr. Robert Reid painted a
picture measuring fifty by one hundred and thirty-three feet. Lieutenant-
Commander Reuterdahl made three paintings of large dimensions to
advertise the Fourth Liberty Loan; these were shown in Washington.
In collaboration with Mr. N. C. Wyeth, he painted a picture ninety feet
long and twenty-five feet high, for the Third Liberty Loan, which was
placed on the Sub-Treasury Building in New York.
Ill
It was in May, 1917, that plans were set on foot to send artists to
France to make a pictorial record of the various activities of our armies.
Major Kendall Banning, who was at that time director of the Division
of Pictures of the Committee on Public Information, and who after-
wards was attached to the War College Division of the War Depart-
ment, was responsible for this recommendation. He at once consulted
with representatives of Great Britain and France and learned what
those countries had done in using their artists for portraying the his-
tories of their armies. Their advice was to commission capable artists
and to assign them to duty within military zones, which would not be
open to civilians.
In June, 1917, Major Banning got in touch with many artists who
seemed to him to be available for duty as official artists; Major Banning
also conferred with Mr. Charles Dana Gibson. Major Banning then
submitted his recommendations to the Secretary of War. It was, how-
ever, not until late in January, 1918, that the Secretary of War took any
action. Authority was then obtained to commission eight men as offi-
cial artists in the Engineer Reserve Corps. At Major Banning’s sugges-
tion, Mr. Charles Dana Gibson was chosen chairman of a group of
artists to make recommendations. Mr. J. Andre Smith was the first of
the group to be commissioned a captain in the Engineer Reserve Corps
[39]
and sent overseas. He was followed by Captains Ernest Peixotto,
William J. Aylward, Harry Townsend, Wallace Morgan, George
Harding, Walter J. Duncan and Harvey Dunn.
Up to January 14, 1919, two hundred and seventy-seven drawings
had been received from our overseas artists, one hundred and five be-
ing from Captain J. Andre Smith. At the Allied War Salon, held in
Ne w Y ork, in December, 1 9 1 8, all of the drawings received to date were
exhibited, one hundred and ninety-six in number. These drawings had
been shown in Washington the month before and in January, 1919, they
were exhibited in Pittsburgh, afterwards being shown in other cities.
Considering the fad: that these artists were rather hampered in their
work, it is most creditable to them that they produced so many good
drawings; it should also be borne in mind that they were depicting very
unfamiliar subjects. The collection on the whole reflects the spirit of our
men, their backgrounds and the incidents of their lives in a reasonably
satisfactory manner, although it leaves much to be desired. Certainly
they are more valuable than any photographs. The subjects of these
drawings were thus described by the art critic of the 7\[ewTor\Times:
“The subjects cover practically the whole field of war, dressing stations,
supply trains, bomb-proof billets, ‘chow,’ officers’ mess, German prison-
ers, the hurry call to fight, and the roll-call afterwards, artillery and ma-
chine guns, drawings showing the kind of ground over which our men
fought, the type of village in which they were billeted, the cavalry
school at Saumur, machine-gun battalions at drill, and a hundred other
scenes of activity, all of which give a clear impression of the great powers
of organization at work behind them.”
The pencil sketches on tinted paper, touched with water-color, by
Captain J. Andre Smith, are excellent drawings. His subjects are prin-
cipally landscapes and towns, and strictly speaking are not war draw-
ings at all. Extremely well drawn are also his pastels and water-colors.
Captain George Harding’s pastels of marching soldiers and scenes
right at the front are also well drawn and very graphic. Captain Ernest
Peixotto’s sketches of landscapes, men on the march, locomotive shops,
and other subjects, which are executed in charcoal and gray water-color,
are also of interest.
Captain Wallace Morgan’s excellent draughtsmanship was well
illustrated in his spirited drawings, which were among the best sent
home by these artists.
Unfortunately Captain Harvey Dunn’s sketches did not arrive in
time to be shown with the drawings of the other official artists. Appar-
ently he made very few drawings, but those he did make are excellent,
if one may judge from the photographs of them which he has showed
me. Captain Dunn, with two or three of the other artists, actually went
over the top with the men. Rapid sketches made by him on a specially
designed box, with rollers to wind up his sketches and present a new
surface of paper, possess a very real interest.
IV
Several artists went to France who did not hold official positions.
One of these was Mr. Samuel J. Woolf, who went ostensibly as a war
correspondent, but really with the idea of making drawings and paint-
ings. With him he carried letters from the War Department and the
Secretary of the Navy; accordingly, he not only secured permission to
visit the training camps, but also the various sectors held by the Amer-
ican troops. He lived with our men, eating and sleeping with them; at
one time he drove an ambulance, at another acted as cook. He was slight-
ly wounded and also gassed. All of these experiences saturated him with
his subjed and enabled him to produce a series of paintings and draw-
ings of decided interest. Several of Mr. Woolf’s paintings and drawings
were shown at the Allied War Salon in New York; twenty-one paint-
ings by him and about sixty sketches and drawings formed a special
exhibition held in New York in February, 1919.
Mr. Lester G. Hornby was with the American troops during the
summer and autumn of 1918 and made a number of slight, but interest-
[41]
ing, drawings. Some of these sketches were published in the spring, 1919,
issues of Harpers Magazine to accompany a series of articles entitled
How the War Was Won, written by General Malleterre of the French
army. Mr. Hornby was given passes as a sketch-correspondent by the
French Committee on Public Information.
Mr. Will Foster, who was in the army at the beginning of the war,
and later became a member of the ambulance service, made a number
of admirable drawings at the front. Several of his drawings were repro-
duced in the April, 1919, issue of Scribners Magazine to accompany an
article written by the artist, entitled A Day with a Sketch-block at the
Front.
Mr. Jo Davidson, the sculptor, went to France, where he modeled
excellent busts of many of the great allied generals and statesmen; Mr.
Robert I. Aitken also did some work of this nature. Mr. Joseph Cum"
mings Chase went to France to paint the portraits of various American
and allied officers, as well as privates who had been decorated. His por-
traits are devoid of merit. Three etchings of Rheims Cathedral under
fire were made by Mr. Louis Orr, three plates of marked excellence.
V
Mr. Joseph Pennell has made a hundred or more lithographs of war
work in America, a continuation of a series started in England. They
form a part of his set of lithographs dealing with the wonder of work.
Building the Battleship, Shell Factory, Shaping a Gun from an Ingot, and
Making War Locomotives are titles of drawings which suggest the range
of his subjects. In his Food and Fuel series we find such titles as Loading
Coal, Stock Yard and The Mining Town. These lithographs constitute
an adequate and excellent record of America’s manifold preparations
for waging war. I know of no one who could have done the work
better. For Mr. Pennell’s album of reproductions of his war work in
England, Mr. H. G. Wells wrote an introduction in which he stated
chat “Through all these lithographs runs one present motif, the motif
M
of the supreme effort of Western civilization to save itself and the world
from the dominance of the reactionary German Imperialism that has
seized the weapons and resources of modern science.”
Mr. Vernon Howe Bailey has also made an excellent series of draw'
ings and lithographs of war work in America, remarkable for their sound
draughtsmanship and sense of verity. Seventy'six of these have been
exhibited in many parts of the country, under the following classifica'
tions: Navy Yards, The Fleet, Gun Shops, Bethlehem, Aeroplanes and
Merchant Ships. Mr. Bailey executed his drawings at the New York,
Philadelphia, Washington and Norfolk Navy Yards, at the Bethlehem
Steel Company's Works, the Curtis Aeroplane Company’s Works, at
the Mineola Flying Field and at three different shipyards. Aside from
Mr. Bailey’s beauty of drawing, his studies possess a very real historf
cal value.
Mr. John C. Johansen went to the shipyards and painted a very nota'
ble set of thirty or more pictures which will always be a valuable rec'
ord of this most necessary of all war acti vities in the United States. They
are very well painted. Some of these pictures show us ships under com
struction, while several are of launchings. A number of shipyard pictures
were also painted by Mr. Thornton Oakley, while several excellent
lithographs were drawn by Mr. Herbert Pullinger and noteworthy
drawings were made by Mr. Hugh Ferriss, of similar subjects. Unfor'
tunately but few records were made of the camps in this country, but
the navy fared a little better. Mr. George Wright sketched at the Pef
ham Bay Training Station and the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Lieutem
ant'Commander Henry Reuterdahl made many colorful paintings of
our destroyers and other naval craft in home waters.
VI
Innumerable pictures have been “turned out” by the painters of this
country to be used for patriotic purposes. These battle pictures, atrom
ity pictures and pictures of hospital ships being torpedoed by subma^
[43]
rines, all painted in America, were used in connection with the Liberty
Loan and Red Cross “drives.” The generous and patriotic spirit shown
by these artists was admirable and their pictures served their purpose
well by encouraging the public to buy bonds and in obtaining contrb
butions. But, as one writer has truthfully said, “Art cannot be hurried.
Art should not be hustled into serving an immediate and clamoring
cause. Art is feeling, and feeling is born within the artist.” As I have
said, these pictures served their purpose, but they have no document
tary value and only a very few can possibly be considered works of
art, and as possessing aesthetic qualities, and it does not seem to me that
these pictures should be seriously considered in a book of this nature.
In this generalization I do not include Mr. George Bellows’s Murder of
Edith Cavell, which in composition and color is quite impressive. Very
well painted, also, is Mr. Paul Dougherty’s picture entitled Sunk
Without a Trace.
There are, however, a number of exceptions to the above assertion
or rather there are a number of pictures which were painted in this coun-
try which do not fall into the above category. I refer to the pictures of
actual events in the United States and to pictures of a symbolical or
allegorical nature.
Mr. George Luks painted a picture of the famous French “Blue Dew
ils” marching down Fifth Avenue, which is one of the best of all the
American war pictures. It is admirably painted, rich in color, and full
of life and vigor; the suggested motion of the men as they swing down
the avenue is really quite masterly. Less interesting in every way, but
also a notable picture, is another canvas by Mr. Luks entitled Czecho'
Slovaks in American Camp Celebrating Their Recognition as a Nation,
in which they are seen dancing around a huge bonfire, which shoots an
enormous yellow flame skywards. Yet another painting by Mr. Luks,
of the celebration held in New York upon the signing of the armistice,
is really more of an enormous, loosely constructed sketch, but at the
same time it is full of movement and fire and is highly amusing. Well
[44]
painted, also, is Mr. Luks’s pidture which shows the Leviathan steaming
up New York Bay, freighted down with members of the returning
T wenty-seventh Division and escorted by scout patrols and various
other craft. It is a matter of keen regret that other artists did not essay
such subjects as these.
Mr. Gifford Beal painted a pidture of the peace celebration in New
York, a canvas full of rich color, and Mr. Hayley Lever one of French
Day on Fifth Avenue. A series of paintings showing New York be"
decked with the flags of the United States and the Allies was painted
by Mr. Childe Hassam — a very notable set of pictures by one of the
greatest of living American artists. No artist has equalled Mr. Childe
Hassam in recording the beauty of New York, and it was fortunate that
New York had such an artist to paint her bannered beauty. Mr. Has"
sam is the foremost exponent of the teachings of Impressionism in Amer"
ica, a most individual and original painter and one possessed of an ex"
tremely sensitive color vision. The freshness and coolness of his pigments
are seen to great advantage in these pictures of New York on parade. My
only criticism is that in none of them does there appear among the
crowds a soldier or a sailor. This would have given a certain note, a cer"
tain touch, an accent, which would have enhanced the picture, besides,
of course, being truthful.
Mr. Edwin H. Blashfield’s pidture entitled Carry On is one of the
most notable war pidtures painted by an American artist. This canvas,
by one of America’s well-known mural painters, is full of fire and shows
a spirit of ardent patriotism. It is remarkable both in design and color.
Fortunately the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors, barred
to all art connected with the war, wide enough to admit this pidture,
which it has purchased. A painting by Mr. William Ritschel, called
Crusaders, is another spirited and noble conception. Three paintings
by Mr. Augustus Vincent Tack, entitled 1918 — Carry On, To the Last
Drop and You Must Choose, are distinguished by refinement of vision
and exquisite color, his blues being particularly beautiful. Mr. George
[45]
Bellows painted two excellent canvases symbolizing the dawn of peace
for the Red Cross membership drive which was held in New York in
December, 1918, as did Mr. Maxfield Parrish. The other paintings, as
well as numerous arches, made for this occasion were excruciatingly
bad, being the work of half-baked extreme modernists.
In America lithography, the most autographic of the reproductive
arts, is just beginning to receive from collectors the attention which it
merits. Whistler’s lithographs are very rapidly taking their place with
his etchings in popular estimation and numerous American artists have
been attracted to the artistic possibilities of the lithographic stone.
Messrs. J. Alden Weir, John Sloan and Ernest Haskell have several
stones to their credit, Mr. William J. Glackens one, Mr. Albert Sterner
quite a number, and Mr. Joseph Pennell hundreds. Lithographs have
also been drawn by Mr. George Bellows and Mr. Childe Hassam, of
subjects connected with the war, and it is of these that I wish to say a
few words.
Mr. George Bellows has drawn a set of twelve lithographs depict'
ing atrocities committed by the German armies in Belgium, based upon
Lord Bryce’s Report. His Murder of Edith Cavell, from which he sub'
sequently made a painting, as he did from several others of the litho'
graphs, is beautifully composed and beautifully drawn. Although the'
atrical in conception, it is on the whole a splendid piece of work. The
titles of Mr. Bellows’s other lithographs are Bacchanal, Sniped, Gott
Strafe England, Belgium Farmyard, Massacre at Dinant, The Cigarette,
The Germans Arrive, Dressing Station, The Barricade, The Last Victim
and Return of the Useless. Some of these drawings are marred by rather
feeble and faulty draughtsmanship, others in their terrible frankness ex'
ceed the bounds set by art and by taste, but these are only details: this
set of lithographs is one of the most eloquent contributions made by an
American artist. Although based on fact, these lithographs are not a
record of personal experience, having been drawn in America. They
should not, however, for this reason be lightly dismissed from serious
[46]
consideration, because if they were, all of Rembrandts paintings and
etchings with Biblical subjects would have to go with them.
Years agoMr.CmLDEHAssAM made some delightful drawings in black
and white of street scenes in Paris, London and New York. In return-
ing to black and white I am glad that Mr. Hassam has chosen lithography
as his vehicle. Mr.HASSAMS six lithographs of New York seen in war
time are entitled Lafayette Street, The Avenue of the Allies, Camouflage,
The French Cruiser, North River and New York Bouquet. These rapid
notations are all delightfully spontaneous and brilliant in execution.
VII
If never before had the poster artist enjoyed such a golden opportu-
nity to make use of his art, this was equally true of the cartoonist. He
wielded a powerful weapon and in his hand it could truly be said, as of
the author, that the “pen is mightier than the sword.”
The cartoonist proved to be one of the most important of all agencies
for moulding public opinion. In America Mr. Charles Dana Gibson
played no small part in putting the real issues of the war before the pub-
lic, and in a striking and telling manner. Mr. W. A. Rogers was another
strong cartoonist, as was Mr. Cesare, Mr. Boardman Robinson, whose
technique was borrowed from M. Forain and who technically is one
of the most adroit of our cartoonists, also did some remarkably clever
and telling work for Colonel George Harvey’s War Weekly, in which
it appeared anonymously. Many of the cartoons of Messrs. Rogers,
Cesare and Robinson have been collected in album form.
VIII
Landscape, or designation targets, have long been used by the armies
of Europe and in the training of the recruit they are of great value. These
“targets” are large landscapes depicting typical French rural scenery and
are used in our military schools to train the embryo artillery officer to
locate quickly a given point in a landscape. The most satisfactory land-
[47]
scape targets are those painted in clear and bright colors. The sine qua
non is correct perspective. The sizes vary from three by six feet to five
by twelve feet. These landscapes are used in class-room instruction to
visualize the country in which the men are to fight, for panoramic sketch"
ing, for working out problems of offense and defense, for target designa-
tion according to the clock-face method in machine-gun, artillery and
rifle practice, and for other purposes.
Many of our landscape artists supplied the need for these “targets”
in our artillery schools and thereby rendered a very useful service to
the government.
IX
The manner in which the sculptor was able to apply his special talents
to work connected with the war, and the way the war reacted upon his
art, forms an interesting feature of our study of the part art played in
the Great War.
Many sculptors entered the camouflage unit of the army [40th En-
gineers], where they were able to render notable service. Others are
now having an opportunity to design monuments to our heroic dead.
Captains J. Andre Smith and Aymar Embury, 2nd, designed medals for
the government, they being modeled by Private Gaetano Cecere. Mr.
Paul Manship, the most gifted of living American medalists, cooperated
with several noted artists on the new Congressional Medal of Honor
for the navy and on the Distinguished Service Medal and Distinguished
Service Cross for the navy. The latter two designs were accepted, but
that for the Medal of Honor was rejected. The Secretary of the Navy
then obtained designs from various manufacturing concerns, eventually
accepting that submitted by a button maker. Comment is unnecessary.
Mr. Manship also modeled a Jeanne d’Arc medal of marked distinction,
as well as three others which were sold for war charities; these were
entitled Kultur, French Hero’s Fund and Art War Relief.
An excellent opportunity to study what effect the war had on Amer-
ican sculpture was afforded at the Allied War Salon held in New York
in December, 1918. Forty 'three works were in the collection, the work
of thirty'two sculptors. Nothing in this group possessed more vitality
and showed greater mastery of modeling than Mr. Mahonri Young’s
colored soldier on the march called One of the Buffaloes, which was the
nickname given to one of the colored regiments. Also full of life was his
Artilleryman. Clio Bracken [Mrs. H. H. Bracken] had an excellent
statuette of Lieutenant Henri Farre, and other works of note were con'
tributed by Mr. Herbert Adams, Mr. Solon Borglum, Miss Malvina
Hoffman, Mr. Hermon A. MacNeil, Mr. Isidore Konti, Anna Cole'
man Ladd [Mrs. Maynard Ladd], Miss Jessie M. Lawson and Mr.
Theodore Spicer'Simpson.
In England Captain Derwent Wood did some notable work in con'
structing masks to cover facial injuries. Professor Henry Tonks also
worked with the plastic surgeon. A Boston sculptress, Anna Cole^
man Ladd [Mrs. Maynard Ladd], reading reports of Captain Wood’s
studies, went to Paris, where she and her assistants rendered splendid
service in the French hospitals making new faces for soldiers whose faces
had been partially shot away.
X
Under the direction of Major Evarts Tracy, an architect, a camou'
flage unit for our army was organized in August, 1917. The men studied
at the American University, Washington, D. C. This unit formed a part
of the Corps of Engineers [40th]. It was a military organization com'
posed of artists, architects, carpenters, ornamental iron workers, tin'
smiths, plasterers, photographers, stage carpenters and property men.
Lieutenant'Colonel Bennion commanded the camouflage unit in France.
The work in general dealt with the concealment of gun emplacements,
trenches and sheds of military value; the screening of roads and manu'
facture of materials for this purpose; the painting of roofs and large areas
of canvas for the covering of ammunition storage and the like; the mak'
ing of various devices and clothing for the concealment of observers and
snipers and occasionally the painting of a scenic drop.
M
Captain Homer Saint Gaudens, who was in charge of the work of
the Second Army, informs us that camouflage had two functions, to
deceive the eye and to deceive the aeroplane cameras; aeroplane obser-
vation was largely photographic. Concealment from aeroplane observa'
tion he states was the more difficult, as the camera was more accurate
than the eye. Color, Captain Saint Gaudens further informs us, proved
to be of relatively small importance, but that strips of dulhcolored cloth,
tied to fishmets gave the needed variation of light and shade.
Modern camouflage is based upon the studies of Messrs. Abbott
Thayer and Louis Fuertes, two painters, as well as those of Dr. Chap'
man of the American Museum of Natural History, who have made a
study of bird life and protective coloration. Some familiar examples of
nature’s camouflage are the frog spotted like a tree; the polar bear with
a coat of white fur which blends with his surroundings of ice and snow,
and the tiger, striped in such a way as to make him invisible in a bam'
boo forest.
An interesting collection of sketches made by the overseas men of
the camouflage unit was shown at the Arts Club of Washington in
April, 1919. Portrait studies were exhibited, as well as drawings show'
ing fortifications and military works.
XI
Owing to Germany’s development of the submarine and the large
number of them which she was able to operate, marine camouflage be'
came a most important science.
In this country Mr. William Andrew Mackay, an artist, was the
pioneer marine camoufleur. He began his studies in 1912 and in 1914
worked with the Navy Department. Some months before the United
States entered the war Mr. Mackay founded a school for the study of
marine camouflage and when we finally entered the conflict the group
of men under him became the nucleus from which the great body of
men in this service grew.
Marine camouflage was done under the direction of the Navy De'
partment, the work being executed by the United States Shipping Board
Emergency Fleet Corporation’s department of camouflage. In each dis-
trict was stationed a district camoufleur, with a corps of trained men.
The first system of marine camouflage to be used was intended to
make the vessel as nearly invisible as possible. Mr. R. F. Yates, in the
course of a most interesting paper on the subject, says that in this sys-
tem “the colors used are of such combinations and values that they cause
the vessel to melt away on the horizon.”
This system, an attempt to make vessels invisible, was later largely
superseded by a system of “baffle” or “dazzle” painting, which was in-
vented by Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson of the British
navy, a well-known marine painter. His painting was designed to dis-
tort the outlines of the ship and mislead the submarine commander as
to the craft’s size and character, as well as to the course she was making.
This system was most successful and undoubtedly prevented many fine
ships from being sent to the bottom of the sea.
XII
A committee on Arts and Decoration, a sub-committee of the Mayor’s
Committee on National Defense for the City of New York, was estab-
lished in May, 1918. The director invited the present writer to organize
this committee and to accept the chairmanship of it. This committee
was organized for the purpose of developing the field of art in connec-
tion with the war, where the services of artists, architects, sculptors
and those practising the allied arts were employed.
A Bureau of Information was established, in the Hall of Records, to
advise and direct those seeking to apply their talents to work connected
with the war. Here could be obtained accurate information concerning
the designing of pictorial placards for government purposes, cartoons,
landscape targets, military and naval camouflage, decorations and other
subjects. A leaflet containing suggestions and information was prepared
and distributed gratuitously.
A Division of Exhibitions was established to further the cause of
pictorial propaganda. Three times the official British lithographs reflect'
ing Britain’s efforts and ideals in the Great War were shown under the
auspices of this committee, and a collection of one hundred and twern
tyffive colored facsimiles of cartoons by M. Raemaekers was shown in
the various cantonments throughout the country. It was the chairman
of this committee, cooperating with Messrs. Duncan Phillips and Au'
gustus Vincent Tack, whom he appointed to form the Division of Ex'
hibitions, who arranged the Allied War Salon held in New York in
December, 1918.
The Committee on Arts and Decoration assisted in the artistic cen'
soring of the historic floats, banners and costumes appearing in the Im
dependence Day Pageant'Parade held in New Y ork in 1 9 1 8.This parade,
in which about sixty different nationalities took part, was easily the most
interesting parade ever held in New York. The Advisory Art Com'
mittee of the Liberty Loan Committee asked for the closest cooperation
between the two committees. The chairman of the Committee on Arts
and Decoration was also invited to serve on the Victory Arch Com'
mittee. These are but a few examples of the wide and useful scope of
this committee in coordinating art work in so far as it affectod the
community.
Mr. Duncan Phillips, a member of this committee, drew up a set of
resolutions containing a suggestion whereby Germany and Austria
might be compelled to make at least some reparation for their wanton
destruction of works of art in France, Belgium and Italy. This resolution
was sent to the President of the United States. The last clause in it read
as follows: “ Resolved , that we do herewith petition our people’s repre'
sentatives, the President of the United States, and others who may be
vested by him with authority, to suggest to the representatives of the
allied nations when they assemble in council and consider upon what
terms Germany and Austria may obtain peace, that an Inter' Allied Com'
mission of Artists be empowered to seled: such works of art as will be
demanded from the German and Austrian Governments, not in revenge,
but in justice, as part of our war indemnity, and as partial reparation
for those beautiful cathedrals and other monuments which the forces
of evil in Germany and Austria have deliberately caused to be dese-
crated and destroyed.”
Mr. Lloyd Warren was the vice-chairman of this committee, and
the executive committee was composed of Messrs. Herbert Adams,
Paul W. Bartlett, Nicholas Murray Butler, Robert W. de Forest,
Charles Dana Gibson, Thomas Hastings, Archer M. Huntington and
Clarence H. Mackay. Thirty-four men composed the general committee.
XIII
The Liberty Loan Committee in New York had a very competent
Art Advisory Committee which rendered a most useful service in as-
sisting in their campaigns. Mr. H. Van Buren Magonigle was chair-
man of this sub-committee, his associates being Messrs. Herbert Adams,
Paul W. Bartlett, Edwin H. Blashfield and Charles Dana Gibson.
Their appointments were made when the arrangements for the Fourth
Liberty Loan were already under way and therefore, in view of this,
the committee decided to concentrate their efforts upon the decoration
of Fifth Avenue, Mr. J. Monroe Hewlett being placed in charge.
Thanks to the work of this committee, New York had during Octo-
ber, 1918, the opportunity of viewing one of the most inspiring exhi-
bitions of pictures ever held in the metropolis. Fifth Avenue, the fairest
avenue in the world, was the gallery, about a hundred windows along
the thoroughfare being the settings for the paintings. Many of the fore-
most artists in the country painted these patriotic pictures, including
Messrs. Paul Dougherty, Gari Melchers, Edwin H. Blashfield, Au-
gustus Vincent Tack, Frank W. Benson, George Bellows, Jonas Lie,
Gifford Beal and George Luks. Messrs. Herbert Adams and Mahonri
Young were among the sculptors. This most interesting display was the
idea of Mr. Augustus Vincent Tack, who carried it out with marked
success. The idea involved in this exhibition is contained in the an-
nouncement drawn up by Mr. Tack, which reads, in part, as follows:
“In the early days, artists showed their works in public. We read the
stories of competition decided by popular vote, of the birds who were
deceived and of the populace who were deceived by the painted veil
of Apelles. In the later Italian days paintings were exhibited on the Rial-
to, where the people became familiar with them, grew to know and
understand them. Something of this is possible here. Fifth Avenue is
our Rialto.”
Another most interesting feature of the work done by this committee
was placing a picture-frame, measuring eight by sixteen feet, in front of
the New York Public Library, on which on twenty-two successive days
was painted a picture typifying the spirit of one of the allied nations. Mr.
Charles B. Falls was the chairman of this committee. Among the
twenty-two artists who painted these pictures were Mr. James Mont-
gomery Flagg [Belgium], Lieutenant-Commander Henry Reuter-
dahl [British Empire], Mr. Charles S. Chapman [Cuba], Mr. F. Luis
Mora [France], Mr. George Wright [Greece], Mr. Charles B. Falls
[Japan], Mr. Adolph Treidler [Montenegro], Mr. Jonas Lie [Pana-
ma], Mr. W. T. Benda [Poland], Mr. William J. Glackens [Russia],
and Mr. Charles Dana Gibson [United States].
XIV
An Allied War Salon, one of the most significant and interesting ex-
hibitions of pictures ever held in New York, was opened to the public
on 9th December, 1918, remaining open until Christmas.
This exhibition was held under the joint auspices of the Division of
Pictorial Publicity of the Committee on Public Information, the Mayors
Committee on National Defense and the American Federation of Arts.
The Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy,
the Acting British High Commissioner, the Ambassador of Italy and
the Acting French High Commissioner were patrons.
The Allied War Salon, however, was not at all “official” in character,
as that word is commonly interpreted. As a matter of fact, there were
no committees, other than honorary ones, and no jury, but the entire
material, some eight hundred items, was gathered by Mr. Duncan Phil-
[54]
lips and the writer of this book, ably assisted in collecting the paint'
ings by American artists by Mr. Augustus Vincent Tack.
As already noted, nearly two hundred drawings by our official artists
in France were shown in this exhibition. A group of fifty or more Ameri-
can posters, including many originals, was shown, as well as some hum
dred carefully selected examples by French and British artists.
Sixty or seventy pictures by American artists, painted in this country,
were the work of Messrs. Gifford Beal, George Bellows, Ernest C.
Blumenschein, Howard Russell Butler, Charles S. Chapman, Paul
Dougherty, Charles W. Hawthorne, Albert Herter, Hayley Lever,
Jonas Lie, George B. Luks, Gari Melchers, William Ritschel, Augus-
tus Vincent Tack, Douglas Volk, Childe Hassam, J. Alden Weir
and many other artists of reputation.
One of the most interesting exhibits was a group of thirty-six paintings
and drawings by the marine camoufleurs of the United States Shipping
Board, Second District.
Drawings, lithographs and etchings in the American sections were
the work of Messrs. George Wright, W. A. Rogers, Charles Dana
Gibson, Louis Orr, Samuel J. Woolf, George Bellows, Childe Has-
sam, Hugh Ferriss, and Herbert Pullinger. Two landscape targets, one
painted by Mr. Augustus Vincent Tack and one by Messrs. H. Bolton
Jones and Francis C. Jones, attracted much interest. Sculpture by Amer-
ican artists, with war subjects, about forty examples, completed the
American exhibit.
In the large gallery given over to Great Britain was the set of litho-
graphs depicting Britain’s efforts and ideals in the Great War, as well
as notable displays of the lithographs of Messrs. Frank Brangwyn and
G. Spencer Pryse.
One of the most interesting galleries in the exhibition was that de-
voted to the lithographs of MM. Lucien Jonas, Forain and Steinlen.
Other French pictures were by MM. Renoir, Hermann Paul, Guy
Arnoux, Benito and Abel Faivre, as well as many original drawings
by M Lucien Jonas. Eighteen original cartoons by M. Raemaekers and
[55]
etchings by Messrs. J. C. Vondrous and Gianni Caproni complet-
ed the exhibition. Great interest was manifested in the etchings by Signor
Caproni, who besides being the world’s greatest designer of aeroplanes,
is an etcher of considerable ability and has executed a number of plates
depicting the aerial side of modern warfare.
XV
With Mr. Thomas Hastings as architect and Mr. Paul W. Bartlett
as the chief sculptor, a temporary arch was eredted at Madison Square
and Fifth Avenue, New York, to do honor to New York’s returning
troops. This Victory Arch, about one hundred and fifty feet high, was
the largest arch ever built in America. Surmounting this arch, which
was an excellent piece of work, was a large equestrian group, the work
of Messrs. Paul W. Bartlett and Attilio Piccirilli. This group
showed a chariot, drawn by six horses and surmounted by a winged
figure. On the main columns were panels by Messrs. Daniel Chester
French and Herbert Adams. The spandrils were by Messrs. Isidore
Konti and Andrew O’Connor, while bas-reliefs were by Gertrude V.
Whitney [Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney], Mr. Mahonri Young, and
fourteen other sculptors.
The art committee of the Liberty Loan Committee was responsible
for a well-designed Vidtory Way on Park Avenue, New York. Rows
of Doric columns formed the two sides of the scheme. A frieze of paint-
ings supplied a background to the speakers’ rostrum. Mr. Arthur Crisp
had a painting of Vidtory in the center, and Mr. J. Monroe Hewlett
paintings of New Zealand and Australia, while South America was
painted by Mr. Charles S. Chapman and North America by Mr. Fred-
erick J. Waugh. Mr. W. T. Benda painted Europe and Mr. Arthur
Covey Africa. The color scheme was the same in all of these paintings,
as well as the scale, and this collaboration worked for harmony. Simplic-
ity was the key-note of this notable achievement. The same committee
placed pictures of scenes connected with the war in many of the prom-
inent windows on Fifth Avenue.
Po
12
SPENCER B. NICHOLS
The Tanker
EDWIN H. BLASHFIELD
Carry On
SAMUEL J. WOOLF
First Aid Station at Seicheprey
JOHN C. JOHANSEN
The Launch of the Watonwan
HENRY REUTERDAHL
The Destroyer Patrol
HENRY REUTERDAHL
The Return of the Victory Fleet
CHILDE HASSAM
Early Morning on Fifth Avenue, May, 1917
GEORGE BELLOWS
Murder of Edith Cavell
GEORGE BELLOWS
Massacre at Dinant
MAXFIELD PARRISH
Design for the Red Cross
MAXFIELD PARRISH
Design for the Red Cross : Detail
MAXF1ELD PARRISH
Design for the Red Cross : Detail
•' +■
HARRY E. TOWNSEND
A Wounded Tank
GEORGE HARDING
An American-French Conference in a Wine Cellar; Chateau-Thierry
WALTER J. DUNCAN
C old Nights Coming On
ERNEST PEIXOTTO
Troops Leaving Esnes, September 23, 1918
HARVEY DUNN
Kamarad — The Sniper
J. ANDRE SMITH
On Hill 2 04 — Southwest of Chateau-Thierry
WILLIAM J. AYLWARD
TroopsWaiting to Advance at Hatton-chatel, Meuse — S. Mihiel Drive
WALLACE MORGAN
Americans Mopping up in Cierges
Feed a Fighter
Eat only what you need —
cWaste nothing —
That he and his family
may have enough
WALLACE MORGAN
Feed a Fighter
JOSEPH PENNELL
Ready to Start
'I’p-Jt — s
JOSEPH PENNELL
Making Armor Plate ( England )
THAT LIBERTY SHALL NOT
PERISH FROM THE EARTH
BUY LIBERTY BONDS
FOURTH LIBERTY LO^INI
JOSEPH PENNELL
That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth
BOARDMAN ROBINSON
The Serb
VERNON HOWE BAILEY
The Superdreadnoughts New York and Arizona
THOMAS HASTINGS
Victory Arch, New York
PAUL MANSH1P
Jeanne d’Arc Medal
BOOKS
WANTED
FOR OUR MEN
*IN CAMP AND,
OYER THERE
TAKE YOUR GIFTS TO
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
C. B. FALLS
Books Wanted
FARM
TO WIN
OverThere
TUCIOI^
he U.$. B<yi"Worki*t£lJ eyer\e
Men 16 <o 21
TW Arvnv Win<? 4WAi*wy
ADOLPH TREIDLER
Farm to Win “Over There'
Sladami Ojcow Naszych
w Szeregach Armii Polskiej
za Ojczyzn^ i Wolnosc
FOLLOWING THE PATHS OF OUR FATHERS IN THE RANKS
OF THE POLISH ARMY FOR MOTHERLAND AND FREEDOM
W. T. BENDA
For Motherland and Freedom
HALT the HUN!
HENRY RALEIGH
Halt the Hun!
< ■ Il-Vi
KEEP /> COMING
We must not only
Peed our Soldiers
at the Front but
the millions of
women 6- children
behind our lines”
Gen. John J. Pershing
WASTE NOTHING
UNITED STATES’
FOOD ADMINISTRATION
GEORGE ILLIAN
Keep It Coming
ANOTHER VICTORY
UNITED STATES SHIPPING BOARD EMERGENCY FLEET CORPORATION
GEORGE WRIGHT
Another Ship — Another Victory
GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA
WILLIAM ORPEN
A Qrenadier Quardsman
CHAPTER TWO
GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA
HE greatest credit should be given to the British Govern-
ment for the foresight and judgment displayed in dispatch-
ing artists of real ability to France. That the British authori-
ties did not select popular shams when they finally decided
to permit artists to go to the front is as commendable as it is astonishing.
One would have imagined that the official war artists would have been
chosen from the conservative and uninspired painters of typical Royal
Academy anecdotes. But nothing of the sort was done; on the contrary,
England sent her most vigorous and original men. She has, in conse-
quence, a very adequate pictorial record of the Great War, a record
which far outstrips that of any other country, Canada only excepted.
France was left far behind and the United States is nowhere at all. Stress
should also be laid upon the fact that Great Britain gave her artists a
free hand and imposed no restrictions of any kind upon them: they were
at perfect liberty to go where they chose and to do what they wanted.
This accounts in large part for the excellence of their work. The offi-
cial American artists, on the other hand, lacked proper direction and
were not given facilities until quite late for carrying on their functions.
Great Britain chose wisely in selecting such artists as Sir William
Orpen, Messrs. C. R. W. Nevinson and Eric H. Kennington to depict
the activities of her armies in France, and Mr. James McBey to record
her campaigns in Palestine and Egypt, and no other living artist could
t>33]
have recorded the environment of the British army and Royal navy as
well as Mr. Muirhead Bone. Excellent, too, are the sea paintings of Sir
John La very. These artists, to mention but a few, not only produced
work quite worthy of them, but in many instances their art was actually
broadened and developed by the war. Mr. John S. Sargent also paint'
ed some pictures in France; one of them is entitled Gassed, and shows a
procession of gas'blinded soldiers groping their way across a battlefield.
The majority of these fine works, it is gratifying to know, are to be
deposited in the Imperial War Museum in London or in the Canadian
War Memorials in Ottawa, where they will always be viewed with
interest and prove a source of inspiration to coming generations.
II
Under the auspices of the Ministry of Information, a representative
selection of the paintings and drawings, with a few lithographs, which
were made for the Imperial War Museum were sent to this country.
The exhibition was first shown at the Corcoran Gallery in W ashington,
in January, 1919, afterwards coming to New York, and then shown
throughout the country, with the cooperation of the Worcester Art
Museum. This exhibition, which comprised two hundred and forty 'one
numbers, gave an excellent idea of the pictorial records which Great
Britain possesses of her part in the Great War.
One hundred and two of the total number of pictures included in this
exhibition were paintings and drawings by Sir William Orpen, who
was gazetted a major in the Army Service Corps. This group of portraits,
studies of types, of battlefields and other subjects comprised, I believe,
about one'half of the total amount of work done by him. Major Orpen’s
series of portraits of British officers and soldiers, as well as one of Marshal
Foch, are most dextrous and brilliantly clever pieces of painting. Rapidly
executed, with the background often left unfinished, they possess the
freshness of sketches. I am sure that all of Orpen’s portraits are capital
likenesses and also that he has got considerable of the sitters’ personals
ties fixed upon his canvases. Painted with a very high-keyed palette, as
are the portraits, Major Orpen’s pictures of battlefields and views of the
town of Cassel, where he made his headquarters, are also very realistic.
His pencil drawings are a delight and rank in technical interest above the
paintings: but in spite of all the evidence of technical ability shown in
them, they are a little hollow and they display no feeling. They appear
cold and lacking in sympathy when compared with the eloquent and
moving lithographs of M. Steinlen and Mr. Pryse. However, posterity
will undoubtedly set a high value upon all this splendid work, so ably ex-
ecuted by one of the most prolific of all the war artists. It is a record of
which the artist may well feel proud and which the British nation may
congratulate itself upon owning.
No artist has touched upon as many sides of the war as Mr. Muirhead
Bone, the famous etcher, and no artist has given us more faithful and ar-
tistic records. He has worked at the navy yards, he has visited the Grand
Fleet and he has made many drawings on the western front, of which
latter drawings Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig has said: “They illus-
trate admirably the daily life of the troops under my command.” His
draughtsmanship is well-nigh faultless; his landscapes, executed in pencil
and wash, are among the greatest landscape drawings made since the
time of Rembrandt, with whose drawings, in absolute mastery and emo-
tional appeal, they are comparable. Mr. Bone’s vision is always that of
a true artist; his line is most intelligent and displays great learning, a line
which is at once extremely delicate and full of great strength and power.
No artist has made a more notable series of drawings of the war than
Mr. Bone. His naval subjects are miles ahead of those attempted by any
other artist.
Mr. James McBey, a Scotsman, favorably known before the war for
his beautifully drawn dry-points and water-colors, was sent to Palestine
and Egypt in his capacity as official artist and in these countries he made
a great number of very sensitive and interesting drawings.
With a commendable spirit of broadmindedness and fairness, Great
[135]
Britain also included among her official artists converts to the teachings
of the Post-Impressionists, the Cubists, the Expressionists and the Futur-
ists. Chief among these artists was Mr. C. R. W. Nevinson, a Futurist,
who has done some extremely interesting work. Mr. Nevinson has
always been thoroughly alive and intensely interested in all the newer
manifestations of art. Impressionism at first claimed his attention, then
Cubism and its geometric formula, Expressionism and Futurism. Out
of all these teachings and theories and influences he has evolved a style
which might be described as a compromise between Futurism and illus-
tration. His art is always dynamic and concerned with synthesis and
abstraction. Pattern and design are also vital matters in his art. Mr.
Nevinson was a motor mechanic and ambulance driver in Flanders the
first year of the war; afterwards he was with the French army as an
hospital orderly. In July, 1917, he was appointed one of the official Brit-
ish artists. Mr. Nevinson has thus seen the war from many and varied
angles. It has always been his endeavor to get at the truth : his pictures
are entirely free from all music-hall and journalistic heroics. Soldiers, I
believe, are unanimous in their praise of these pictures, saying that they
depict the very soul of the war. The artist has done considerable flying
and his paintings of aeroplanes are really remarkable. In such a litho-
graph as the Swooping on a Taube the speed of the ’plane is rendered
in a marvelous manner ; the rhythm and swinging motion that he gets
into columns of marching men is also very wonderful. From his dazzling
paintings Mr. Nevinson has executed lithographs and dry-points of great
distinction. Working in these mediums, he has also made many equally
engaging compositions of subjects not connected with the war. He is a
dry-pointer possessing considerable skill and a lithographer who gets a
beautiful lithographic quality into his drawings. Mr. Paul Nash has suc-
cessfully painted the utter desolation of the shell-torn landscape. Messrs.
William P. Roberts, John Nash and P. Wyndh am Lewis were among
the other modernists.
Among other interesting works in the exhibition sent to America by
the British Government was a large study, excellent in composition and
in color, of three soldiers standing before a mass of ruins, by Major Au-
gustus John. This painting, a finished study for a large mural decoration
which the artist has painted for the Canadian Government, in its sim-
plicity and strength, but above all in its pale and reticent color, rather
suggests the decorations of Puvis de Chavannes. This was one of the
most notable pictures in the exhibition. Several canvases by Sir John
Lavery, a painting by Mr. George Clausen, a piece of sculpture by Mr.
Jacob Epstein, the only one in the collection, lithographs by Messrs. Eric
H. Kennington, Frank Brangwyn and G. Spencer Pryse, with other
works by Messrs. W. B. Adeney, Alfred Bentley, John Everett, Colin
W. Gill, C. J. Holmes, Bernard Meninsky, William Rothenstein,
Henry Rushbury, Randolph Schwabe and E. A.Verpilleux were also
shown.
Ill
Under the auspices of the British Government, a set of sixty-six litho-
graphs depicting Great Britain’s efforts and ideals in the war was dis-
played in many parts of the United States. A number of sets were sent
to this country to be exhibited and sold as propaganda. The idea origi-
nating with the artists who made these lithographs.
Artistically, the six prints by Mr. Muirhead Bone, entitled Building
Ships are the most important, being most masterly in execution. Mr.
Eric Kennington’s set entitled Making Soldiers is also very fine indeed.
Mr. Robert Nichols, an English poet, who served throughout the war,
quite rightly, I think, says that Mr. Kennington’s drawings are won-
derful portrayals of the British soldier as he is — a sober reflective being,
and not a music-hall humorist with a passion for being killed, as the
music-halls would make him out.
Excellent, too, are the sets by Mr. Frank Brangwyn entitled Making
Sailors, by Mr. George Clausen entitled Making Guns, by Mr. C. R.
W. Nevinson entitled Making Aircraft, by Mr. Charles Pears entitled
Transport by Sea, by Mr. William Rothenstein entitled Work on the
Land and by Mr. Claude Shepperson entitled Tending the Wounded.
Mr. A. S. Hartrick’s series bearing the legend Women’s Work was
not so well drawn as the others.
The above lithographs are intended to illustrate Great Britain’s ef-
forts in the war: the second part of the exhibition sets forth some of
the ideals for which she was fighting. These were all in color, with the
exception of Major Augustus John’s lithograph entitled The Dawn.
Perhaps the most beautiful in the set is Mr. Charles H. Shannon’s The
Re-birth of the Arts, in which Art, unscathed, is seen rising to her feet
amidst a scene of desolation. Extremely beautiful also, both in design
and color, is Mr. Edmund Dulac’s Poland, a Nation. The other litho-
graphs in this set are Mr. Ernest Jackson’s Defense Against Aggres-
sion— England and France — 1914, Mr. Charles Ricketts’ Italia Re-
denta, Mr. Frank Brangwyn’s The Freedom of the Seas, Mr. William
Rothenstein’s The Triumph of Democracy, Mr. William Nicholson’s
The End of War, Mr. Maurice Greiffenhagen’s The Restoration of
Alsace-Lorraine to France, Mr. George Clausen’s The Reconstruction
of Belgium, Mr. G. MoiRA’sThe Restoration of Serbia and Mr. Edmund
J. Sullivan’s The Reign of Justice.
IV
During the first two years of the war it was almost impossible for
either an artist or a photographer to get to the front. Mr. Frederic
V illiers, one of the most famous of living war artists, having covered
practically every war since the Franco-Prussian War, was refused per-
mission to work with the British armies, but succeeded in getting per-
mission to sketch with the French. His very accurate drawings, as a rule
actually made on the spot, many times in a front-line trench, were pub-
lished in The Illustrated London J\[ews. Mr. Villiers told the writer of
this book that they are the only drawings in existence depicting the first
two years of the conflict, which gives them a very real value as historical
records, aside from their excellent draughtsmanship.
Artistically speaking, the British war posters are very far below the
French in interest, being for the most part but garish and illy drawn
commercial products, as were the American. The posters of Messrs. G.
Spencer Pryse and Frank Brangwyn, whose posters some years ago
in the London “Underground” attracted so much attention owing to
their very great artisticappeal,aretheexceptions. Captain Pryse’s post-
ers are true works of art and constitute some of the best lithographs of
any description produced during the war. Such a poster of his as that en-
titled The Only Road for an Englishman, which shows a regiment of
British soldiers marching through a ruined town, is not only extremely
well drawn and excellent in composition and in color, but it makes a
very strong emotional appeal. In addition to his posters, Captain Pryse
has drawn a great many auto-lithographs, issued in proof form and pos-
sessing a very beautiful lithographic quality. The strong human appeal in
all of these lithographs is irresistible and accounts in large part for their
great popularity; however, the artistic appeal which they make is a real
one, and they are quite different from the story-telling pictures which one
associates with the Royal Academy. Mr. Brangwyn’s posters to en-
courage enlistment in the navy are very vigorous compositions, full of
energy and displaying a keen sense for the dramatic.
Major Charles Pears has painted a series of extremely fine marine
paintings, many of them being of camouflaged ships. Mr. Glyn Philpot
has painted portraits of four of the British admirals, while Mr. Francis
Dodd has made pencil drawings, colored with water-color, of twelve:
these latter are beautifully drawn.
In touching upon the war pictures which have been made by British
artists, one must certainly not neglect to mention the humorous and racy
sketches made at the front by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather. His three
favorite characters, who appear in most of his drawings, Old Bill, Alf
and Bert, were great favorites among both the soldiers at the front and
the people at home. These three famous characters have had a very suc-
cessful play written around their exploits.
i>39]
V
The Canadian W ar Memorials Funa was founded in order that every
phase of Canada’s operations, both in Canadian training camps and on
the battlefields of France, might be properly recorded.
The idea for this form of memorial originated with Lord Rothen
mere, former British Air Minister and Lord Beaverbrook, head of the
Canadian War Records Office and former Minister of Information. Mr.
Paul G. Konody was appointed art director, which position he has held
since the inception of the Memorial, in the summer of 1917.
In organizing the scheme, as is pointed out in the foreword to the
catalogue of that portion of the pidures which was shown in London
and in New York [i9i9^,“the committee throughout endeavored to do
equal justice to the claims of history and of art. Historical accuracy has
been secured by the timely dispatch of a band of distinguished artists
to the fighting front. To ensure artistic success the committee worked
out a schedule of subjeds embracing every sphere of Canadian war
preparation and war activity exemplified by typical scenes, each one
being entrusted to the artist whose past achievements pointed most clear"
ly to his ability to do full justice to his task. These artists were selected
in the most catholic spirit, to represent every school and group. This
series of decorative panels was thought out in connection with an an
chitectural scheme which is to form a suitable and imposing framework
for the pictures, so that they will present themselves as an impressive
ensemble in orderly sequence. Around this nucleus of vast decorative
panels has been built up a comprehensive collection of minor paintings,
drawings and engravings of war subjects, portraits of generals, states"
men and Canadian V. C.’s, works of sculpture, and a historical section
of early English paintings and engravings, directly connected with
Canadian history.”
Among the latter paintings, it is interesting to note, are Romney’s pon
trait of Joseph Brant, the celebrated “sachem” of the Mohawk Indians,
Reynolds’s portrait of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, Lawrence’s portrait of Sir
Alexander Mackenzie and West’s painting entitled The Death of
Wolfe.
Majors Augustus John, D. Y. Cameron, Richard Jack and J. Kerr
Lawson were the first artists to be sent to the front by the Canadian
War Memorials. Major John’s painting, which will dominate the mag'
nificent building which is to be erected in Ottawa to house this cob
lection, is a large decorative canvas measuring forty by ten feet. Mr.
Konody describes it in the following words: “John’s art is always syn-
thetic. He is not an illustrator. He goes for the typical, not the incident
tal. His subject is not any particular episode, but a summary of all he
has seen, of all that has stirred his imagination and his sympathy dur-
ing his five months at the front. His picture may be described as an
epitome of modern war.” Major Cameron painted an impression of the
featureless plains of Flanders and Major Jack pictures of the second bat-
tle ofYpres and of the attack made on Vimy Ridge on the 9th of April,
1917. Major Lawson showed in his paintings the ruins ofYpres and
Arras.
Mr. C. R.W. Nevinson painted one of the exploits of Major Bishop,
Canada’s greatest airman, and a series of four panels entitled The Roads
of France, illustrating the progress of the fighting force from the base to
the front line. Mr. A. J. Munnings painted a series of fifty small paint-
ings of Canadian cavalry and lumbermen, pictures of marked excellence
and most spirited. Other important pictures of events connected with the
war were painted by Lieutenants A. Y. Jackson and Algernon Tal-
mage, Gunner W. Roberts, Lieutenant Paul Nash, and Mr. Leonard
Richmond, to mention but a few of the fifty or more other artists en-
gaged in this work. Portraits of military and civil personages of distinc-
tion were painted by Mr. Charles H. Shannon, Major Ambrose Me-
Evoy, Mr. Harold Knight, Sir William Orpen, and numerous other
portrait painters of great reputation.
In addition to the pictures painted in the fighting zone, Canada also
possesses a valuable series of paintings and drawings showing the making
of the soldier in Canada and all the other activities at home. Mr.
Arthur Lismer has painted records of things going on at Halifax: Mine
sweeping, convoying, patrolling and harbor defense. Miss Mabel May
went to the munition works in Montreal, where women and girls labored
unceasingly. Mr. Manly MacDonald chose womans work on the
land as his subject. Mr. Francis H. Johnston went to the Toronto Fly'
ing Schools and Mr. R. F. Gagen painted a shipbuilding picture in
Toronto Bay. Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson painted a
spirited canvas showing the great fleet which carried the First Canadian
Division across to England at the outbreak of the war. I have merely
chosen a few examples to illustrate the interesting and comprehensive
manner in which this side of the work was accomplished.
Sculpture, it should be noted, was executed by Captain F. Derwent
Wood and M. I. Mestrovic.
The following comments on the Canadian War Memorials, and on
war memorials in general, are taken from an anonymous article pub-
lished in Canada in Khaki. I am so in accord with the writer’s views
on this subject that I have ventured to quote him at some length :
“The idea of an artistic war memorial is generally connected with
a winged and laurel-crowned confection in marble and bronze, erected
on some prominent site for the edification or derision, as the case may
be, of future generations. Or, if it takes a pictorial form, it is apt to be
a series of unconvincing, melodramatic illustrations, more or less fanciful,
of famous episodes or individual acts of heroism, that are of little artistic
and absolutely no documentary or historical value. Who can pass
through the endless galleries of battle pictures at Versailles without
experiencing a sense of invincible boredom? A war memorial of this
kind, if it is to be of lasting value, if it is to teach future generations, to
stir their imagination, to stimulate their patriotic feeling, must be a thrill-
ing record of facts, based on personal experience.
“If a pictorial record of this greatest of all wars is to be of perma-
nent value, it must be created from actual impressions whilst they are
fresh on the mind, whilst emotions and passions and enthusiasms are at
their highest. A ‘posthumous’ war picture is as valueless as a posthu'
mous portrait. . . . Art remains to teach posterity of the glorious part
of the race, and to keep alive the flame of patriotism. Our whole knowh
edge of civilisations that have vanished long since — Egypt, Babylonia,
Chaldaea, and so forth — is derived from the scanty artistic records that
have been saved from the destruction of Time and War. The visual
evidence of one fragment of art teaches us more, and more tellingly and
rapidly, than whole volumes of erudition.”
Australia also had her official artists to depict her achievements, as
well as men in the ranks who recorded their impressions. These artists,
who worked in Palestine and Egypt, as well as in France, made many
hundred paintings and drawings of marked excellence. Some of the best
of these pictures are by Lieutenants F. R. Crozier, G. W. Lambert, A.
Streeton and S. J. Lamorna Birch. Lieutenant Lambert s paintings of
the tragedies attending the Gallipoli campaign are particularly well
painted.
WILLIAM ORPEN
Horses Near Aubigny
WILLIAM ORPEN
Bringing in a Wounded Tommy
WILLIAM ORPEN
The Qas Mask
WILLIAM ORPEN
The Rig Crater, No. 2
WILLIAM ORPEN
South Irish Horse
IN
MUIRHEAD BONE
A British Tank
- —
MUIRHEAD EONE
The Bridge of a British Merchant Ship at Sea
MUIRHEAD BONE
H. M. S. Vindictive after Z eebrugge
MUIRHEAD BONE
Ready for Sea
JAMES Me BEY
Entry of the Allies into Jerusalem
JAMES Me BEY
Water Transport
C. R. W. NEVINSON
That Cursed Wood
C. R. W. NEVINSON
After a Push
C. R. W. NEVINSON
Swooping on a Taube
PAUL NASH
Sunrise: Inverness Copse
ERIC KENNINGTON
A Lewis Qunner of a Yorkshire Regiment
CHARLES PEARS
Maintaining Oversea Forces
EDMUND DULAC
Poland, A Nation
CHARLES H. SHANNON
The Re-birth of the Arts
FRANK BRANGWYN
The Lookout
wm
FRANK BRANGWYN
Put Strength in the Final Blow
G. SPENCER PRYSE
The Fall of Ostend
J
G. SPENCER PRYSE
The Wayside Crucifix - Belgium, 1914
Through Darkness
THE ONLY ROAD
FOR AN ENGLISHMAN
G. SPENCER PRYSE
The Only Road for an Englishman
G. SPENCER PRYSE
The Retreat of the Seventh Division and Third Cavalry on Ypres
G. SPENCER PRYSE
Belgium, 1914
JACOB EPSTEIN
The Tin Hat
A. J. MUNNINGS
Horses Watering near Domart
D. Y. CAMERON
Flanders from Kemmel
LEONARD RICHMOND
Canadian Railway Construction in France
P. WYNDHAM LEWIS
Canadian Qunpit
FRANCE
L'AISNE bEVASTEE
CEOVRE DE GOERRE POOR LA RECONSTiTUTiON
DES FOYERS DETROiTS
OMisertlOlhulMfODtuiH
Plus d 'homme a lelal/i. de Vierge a la ChaptHe.
Denidauloit...
Quer’esfpwloi!U ^
SiEGE SOCiAL
129,BA™MALE5HERBES
PARIS
TH. A. STEINLEN
L’Aisne Devastee
CHAPTER THREE
T was in France that the lithograph first became a recognised
medium for artistic expression. Gericault and Delacroix
made many strong drawings, to be followed in the thirties
by the great Daumier, a marvellous draughtsman and the
king of caricaturists. In the sixties notable lithographs were made by
Manet, Barye and Millet. The most perfed: expressions of Fantin-La-
tour’s sensitive art are to be found in his lithographs, enchanting prints
which rank with the masterpieces of the art. In many cases Fantin first
drew his lithograph and from it made his painting, the lithograph in-
variably being the more spontaneous and charming. Later came the pen-
etrating lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec, who was another master, and
one who successfully introduced color into his prints, as well as Degas,
whose lithographs only became generally known when his collections
were dispersed in Paris, shortly after his death. MM. Forain and Stein-
len, the greatest draughtsmen in France to-day, are doing much of their
finest work on the lithographic stone.
Since the artistic possibilities of the lithograph were thus so splen-
didly developed in France, it is not surprising to find that so many of
her artists choose the lithograph as their medium for recording the
events of the Great War. As a matter of fact, the most artistic and
important pictorial records made in France are to be found in her post-
ers and in the powerful lithographs in black and white by MM. Stein-
len, Forain and Lucien Jonas. I believe these lithographs to be greater
works of art than the drawings and paintings by her official artists, for
in an inimitable and masterly fashion they express the soul of the great
French nation and put before us in a vivid manner her undaunted coun
age and devotion to la Patrie.
II
The drawings and etchings of M. Steinlen possess the very scent and
flavor of Paris. They are as typically Parisian as the drawings of Row"
landson are essentially English and the pictures of Goya reek of the soil
of Spain.
With much pertinence M. Steinlen has been called the Millet of the
streets, for in his studies of the toiling workers of Paris, of the artists and
of the destitute, we find the same understanding that we find in the
peasants of Millet. In Steinlen we see always a profound sympathy
with suffering humanity and tenderness towards the oppressed and urn
fortunate, learned through a long familiarity with the inhabitants of the
various poorer quarters of Paris.
M. Steinlen’s artistic output has been enormous: his pencil is nearly
as active as was Daumiers. And always this gifted pencil has been wield"
ed on the side of justice; many times has he fought battles for the op"
pressed. In his history of painting, Major Haldane Macfall says that
M. Steinlen is “one of the giants of his age, a man who has bettered the
world, lifted his generation, and brought honor to his great people.” His
drawings for Gil Bias and illustrations for the books of Coppe,de Mau"
passant, Anatole France, Bruant, the cabaret singer, and chansons en"
titled Dans la Route, as well as for many other publications, are num"
bered by the thousand. Extremely beautiful are his lithographs for Chan"
son de Montmartre and full of character his Des Chats; no one has
drawn a cat as well as M. Steinlen.
With such an artistic equipment and with such a profound sympa"
thy with suffering humanity, it was but natural that M. Steinlen should
throw himself heart and soul into depicting events connected with the
terrible war. He more than rose to the occasion and in a succession of
posters, drawings, lithographs and etchings he has preserved for poster-
ity a magnificent and unequalled record of the nobility of character and
bravery displayed by the French race, as well as the appalling distress
wrought upon that valiant people. With profound understanding and
sympathy he has gone, sketch-book in hand, to the railway station where
the wounded are arriving, he has gone to the devastated town, he has
stood by the roadside as the soldiers marched by. An etching shows us
several badly wounded men being carried from the battlefield under fire :
it is called The Escape from Hell. A lithograph has for its subjed: a pro-
cession of old people and little children and babies leaving a German
jail. Another lithograph is of a group of soldiers lustily singing as they
march down the road.
Ill
M. Forain is as caustic and unrelenting in his realism as was Degas.
In addition, he is a satirist and one that shares with the caricaturist the
joy of dwelling upon peculiarities of human make-up and delving into
the science of physiognomy: but he only emphasizes, whereas the cari-
caturist exaggerates.
M. Forain has gone to the halls of justice, to the opera and to the
glittering restaurants in search of material, while M. Steinlen has con-
cerned himself with the artists in the Montmartre district, with the
humble toilers of Paris and with the vagabonds who dwell in the re-
gions of the fortifications. Taken together, their drawings preserve for
posterity an excellent pictorial record of the manners and customs ex-
isting in Paris during their time; this record will be of inestimable value
to the political and social historian of the future.
The drawings of M. Forain are always immensely entertaining and
exciting, and for the artist they are most stimulating companions. Degas
always liked to have a lot of them around. Voltaire was right when he
defined a bore as one who said everything; no one has ever been bored
by a drawing by M. Forain.
M. Forain’s interest is in the essentials, which he always emphasises,
and his economy of means is nothing short of marvellous. He faithfully
records an incident, strong in characterisation, with a dosen strokes of
the pen. His drawings, etchings, lithographs and paintings are brilliantly
clever in execution, but they are far more than that: they disclose a
knowledge and a learning that is profound. Drawing, Ingres has said,
does not consist only of lines, but is much more — expression, the inner
form, the structure, the modeling. Daumier and Degas were M. Forain’s
artistic nourrices, but he is absolutely original and his work could never
be mistaken for that of another man. His line is alive and even more
telling and full of character than that of the greatest Japanese.
It was inevitable that M. Forain, like M. Steinlen, should have been
completely absorbed by the war and it was likewise a foregone conclu'
sion that the war would react upon him and his art in a powerful manner.
A set of perhaps a hundred and fifty lithographs of events and scenes
connected directly with the war rank with his most brilliant achieve'
ments. How gripping and how moving is such a drawing as his litho'
graph entitled Forward ! and how extraordinary is the draughtsmanship !
IV
M. Lucien Jonas, who before the war was known as a painter and
an illustrator, is a younger man than either M. Steinlen or M. Forain
and is an artist who has come into prominence since 1914. The war
brought him inspiration and developed his art. He has made innumep
able drawings at the front of types, as well as portraits of generals, most
of them quite interesting. However, it is a set of twentyTour lithographs
entitled The Heroic Soul of France, as well as many other stirring prints
of this description, that displays the artist’s gifts in their full maturity.
M. Jonas is not to be classed with such artists as MM. Steinlen and
Forain, for he does not possess their great artistic endowments, but his
drawings are probably more popular with the masses than either. Mr.
Duncan Phillips has written: “They are compounded of the heart stuff
[224]
of which people’s prayers are made in times of need. This is the secret
of their success with the French people to-day. M. Jonas explains to
them their own fighting idealism.” One of the lithographs in the set
which shows the heroism of France is entitled A Volunteer, which
is not only the best of the series, but also one of the most inspiring
drawings which the war has brought forth. An officer of the famous
Blue Devil regiment is seen calling for a volunteer to perform some par*
ticularly hazardous duty — and every man within sight springs forward
for the privilege of giving his life, if need be, to France. Another print
shows a blind chaplain struggling along a rough, shell's wept highway
carrying on his back a paralysed soldier, who endeavors to direct his
course. Yet another print is of a much bandaged soldier who has been
taken prisoner by the Germans and is being interrogated by two offi-
cers. One of these officers, a revolting looking beast, holds a revolver
almost against the forehead of the prisoner, who looks him in the eye
and replies to his question: “I shall tell nothing.”
V
Lieutenant Henri Farre has painted some of the most remarkable
and authoritative of all the war pictures which have been made. He has
depicted the part played by the French aviators in the war and he has
painted it most graphically and in a beautiful manner. At the outbreak
of the war he was painting portraits in Buenos Aires, but immediately
went to France and offered his services to his country. He was attached
to the Escadrille de Bombardement with the rank of Observer-Bombar-
dier and subsequently flew over all parts of the Western Front. His
most interesting paintings, executed in all cases from notes made as he
flew and painted immediately upon landing, have been exhibited in many
parts of the United States.
VI
Under the auspices of the French High Commission, several hundred
intimate and delightful sketches by French soldier-artists were exhibited
in many parts of the United States during the years of 1918 and 1919.
Quite a large group of drawings in wash and charcoal, with a few in
color, were the work of M. Georges Scott, the well-known illustrator.
His sketches and drawings, well executed and full of fire, are scenes in
the trenches and on the battlefield. One is called Gloire au Soldat de
France, another Offensif en Champagne, another Patrols. A beautiful
drawing in pen-and-ink and water-color entitled Watchers at the Foot
of Tofana shows two men in a trench, a high mountain covered with
snow being in the background. Some very strong water-color studies of
soldiers both back of the lines and in the trenches, were by M. Renefer.
Other excellent drawings of soldier types were by M. Bernard Naudin
and M. Rogerde Valerio. Amusing little lithographs of children play-
ing soldier were by M. Poulbot. Other good drawings were by MM.
Lucien Jonas and A. Boisfleury. Mr. Royal Cortissoz well summed up
the impression conveyed by these delectable sketches when he wrote:
“It is not, indeed, of artistic ambition at all that we are conscious as we
survey these souvenirs of the war. It is, instead, of everyday human
traits, of brave men relieving an intolerable routine with unpretentious
artistic excursions, dashing off slight memoranda of dreary scenes, affirm-
ing not so much dexterity of hand as a simple manly courage.”
Early in 1919 a collection of seventy-seven paintings by French ar-
tists, twenty-five in number, were placed on view in one of the New
York galleries. They were the work of M. E. Louis Gillott, official
artist of the French army, M. Charles Fouqueray, official painter of the
Musee de Y Armee, several pupils at the Ecole des Beaux-arts and other
artists. But few of them possessed very great interest.
Hundreds of small drawings, mostly in water-color, the work of for-
mer students of the Ecole des Beaux-arts, were sent to America to be
sold for the benefit of the families of artists who had been wounded or
killed in the war. Many of these sketches were extremely well drawn.
This excellent work was carried out by Mr. Henry Renwick Sedgwick,
of New York.
[226]
Thirty paintings by M. Jean Gautier, representing personal expe-
riences of the artist in the battles of Verdun and the Marne, were shown
in New York in March, 1919, and proved to be fairly interesting.
Many fine and spirited drawings by MM. Francois Flameng,
Charles Huard and Georges Scott, all official artists, have appeared
in the pages of L’ Illustration.
VII
As was to be anticipated, the finest war posters have come from
France, where the artistic poster was originally conceived and brought
to great perfection. It has been well said that the inspiring French war
posters are “an intimate expression of the greatest convulsion in the
history of civilisation.”
None of the French posters have been more effective or artistic than
those of M. Steinlen: his designs are masterpieces of poster craft, simple,
straightforward drawings, of which the lettering is by him and forms
an integral part, and posters which serve their purpose well by telling
their story in an unmistakable and forceful manner. In his poster en-
titled L’ Aisne Devastee, which is an appeal for funds for a charity in-
terested in the reconstruction of destroyed homes, we see a young
mother grasping her two small children to her side. A completely ru-
ined house in the background completes the picture, the pathos of which
surely could have been rendered by no one else as well as M. Steinlen.
In La Triennale, a poster designed to advertise an exposition of French
art held for the benefit of the Fraternite des Artistes, we perceive the
magnificent and undaunted figure of an older and bearded soldier gazing
at a man ploughing with a pair of great white oxen, preceded by a figure
of Victory. Other superbly drawn figures of the invincible French sol-
diers appear in a poster entitled Concert en Grange and Pendant Qu’Ar-
sene se Bat, while in a poster issued by the Serbian Relief we have a
most tragic procession of half-starved refugees.
M. Forain’s poster entitled Le Vetement du Prisonnier de Guerre
contains the figure of a seated soldier, a prisoner, engaged in writing,
[227]
using his right knee as a table. The drawing of this soldier has been done
in a most masterly fashion; technically, indeed, the war produced noth'
ing finer than this. Another superb drawing by M. Forain appears on
the poster issued for a charity known as Le Bon Feu.
No artist of France has had the war react on his art in a more inter'
esting way than “Sem,” the famous caricaturist. He designed two post'
ers which take the highest rank among all the posters produced during
the war. His two posters entitled Pour le dernier quart d’heure . . .
and Pour le triomphe souscrivez, a l’emprunt national are simply mag'
nificent. In the former print we see a general with his aides watching
a regiment of soldiers march by, over a field spotted with shelbholes;
in the latter a symbolical view of the Arc de Triomphe which fairly
breathes the spirit of ardent patriotism.
Full of fire and spirit and splendidly drawn is M. Abel Faivre’s post'
er entitled On les aura! issued for the second government loan, which
shows a youthful soldier apparently just going “over the top.” It is one
of the finest of all the war posters. Another stirring design by M. Abel
Faivre is his poster bearing the legend L’Or Combat Pour LaVictoire,
in which the cock on an enormous twenty 'franc piece is springing out
to attack a crouching German soldier.
Other excellent posters are M. Georges Scott's Pour le Drapeau!
Pour la Victoire ! M. Willette’s Journees Girondines and M. Poulbot’s
N’oublie pas de souscrire . . . pour la Victoire! . . . et le retour! to mem
tion but a few more of the many excellent posters which have been
produced in France.
MM. Guy Arnoux, Benito and Hermann Paul have made some
most interesting drawings to commemorate certain events* of the war,
such as the arrival of the American troops in France and the work of
the American Red Cross. These charming designs, which are issued
singly, have been drawn after the manner of old French woodcuts and
broadsides and are printed in color.
[228]
J. L. FORAIN
The Prisoner ( from a Poster)
J. L. FORAIN
What? Not Even a Child!
J. L. FORAIN
— It is a Neutral
TH. A. STEINLEN
Aid to the Wounded
TH. A. STEINLEN
Under the Boot
TH. A. STEINLEN
Concert en Qrange
"LA TRI EN in ale
EXPOSITION D'ART FRAN Q A I S
au profit dela’FRATERNITE des ARTISTES
SALLE du J EU de PAUME
TERRASSEdesTUILERIES
du 2 M ars au 15 Avril1916
de 0 Heures du Matin
ALA TO/^BEE DU J O U R_
Vernissage le IV Mars
CO/v\ ITE:
M M: Albert BESNARD. L. BONNIER. L. BOUCHARD.
Maurice CHABAS. J. CHERET. F. R. CARABI N.^
Raphael COLLIN. F. CORMON. C.COTTET. J. DAMPT.
A DECHENAUD.C.OESPIAU. G.DESVALLIERES.Mt Helene DUFAU.
M.M. FORAIN. FRANTZ-JOURDAIN. Charles GUERIN,
GUIRAND DE SCEVOLA.HARPIGNIES.HENRIMARTIN.
F. HUMBERT, R. LA LI Q UE, Ernest LAURENT.EEEE
L. LEGRAND, A.LEPERE, LE SIDANER.MauriceDENIS,
plumeT.renoir.c.rivaud, RODIN.
I LEN.VU I LIARD. Wl LLETT E
TH. A. STEINLEN
La Triennale
LUCIEN JONAS
A Volunteer
LUCIEN JONAS
Portraits of Qeneral Pershing
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PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR
Portrait of His Son, Wounded in the War
LES HYMNES ALLIES
* HVMNE AMER.ICAIN *
LA BANNIEf.E tTOILEt FLOTTt SUft ^
F.VYS &L LA Li 8L1Vt£ E.T lel FOYE* 3>P5 URMtS
Hermann Paul,hree clTOOO ■e«implatm^2yU:e*<iPA(^lS,par le N0UVEL EsSOR./t^rue <)«$.- few.
HERMANN PAUL
The American Hymn
ew cntrr.N dam rilistoirr :»\ce riiomif ur itnj»t
yS.lMl .K.V.iU II IIOim K lO^lo! u il\f\(i|.>l!>
BENITO
The Conquerors of the Marne
BENITO
The Heart of Americ
HENRI FARRE
Bombing Nancy
ANTONIN MERC1E
Plaquette de la Fraternite des Artiste
les souscriptions A L EMPRUNT NATIONAL sont recues a ea
BANQUE NATIONALE DE CREDIT
“SEM”
Pour Ic Dernier Quart d’Heure
'fifri/zc & deirticv yturt/
ft
flrun.
^trudc/yre^ 'fcmfiiunt r? ctfiorutC
LesSouscriptions SO NT ReQUES a Paris et«n Province
BANOUE NATIONALS .CREDIT
Pour le Triomphe Souscrivez a I’Emprunt National
SOUSCRIVEZ A L EMPRUNT NATIONAL
LES SOUSCRIPTIONS SONT REQUES A PARIS ET EN PROVINCE
BANQUE NATION ALE de CREDIT
GEORGES SCOTT
Pour le Drapeau! Pour la Victoirc !
(/h b,
OUOXa.
2EMPRUNT
DE
LA DEFENSE NATIONALE
ABEL FAIVRE
On les Aura!
. OUR. LA TRANCE
VERSEZ VOTRE OK
COr Combat PourLaVictoire
Au ProFit fxausif des (Euures de Guerre du Departement
DEVAMBEZ Imh HARIS
ADOLPHE WILLETTE
Journees Qirondines
EMPRUNT la DEFENSE NATIONALE
PUBLIE SOUS LES AUSPICES DE LA FEDERATION NATIONALE DE LA MUTUALITE FRANCAISE
QUI FAIT APPEL A TOUS LES TRAVAI LLEURS. ATOUS LES PREVOYANTS ATOUS LES PATRIOTES
POUR LA LIBERATION DU TERRITOIRE ET LA VICTOIRE FINALE.
FRANCISQUE POULBOT
THE NETHERLANDS
— 7
LOUIS RAEMAEKERS
merican Army in France— The Relief
The At
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September, 1919.
Pictorial Records of the War. A lecture delivered at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York. By A. E. Gallatin. The American Magazine of Art (Wash-
ington), October, 1919.
The War in Cartoons. Edited by George J. Hecht. 100 illustrations. New York:
E. P. Dutton 6? Co., 1919.
Posters
Posters and War Work. By Helen Wright. Illustrated. The International Studio (New
York), June, 1918.
Making Posters Fight. By Montrose J. Moses. Illustrated. The Boo\man (New York),
July, 1918.
Posing the War for the Painter. By Robert Cortes Holliday. Illustrated. The Boo\'
man (New York), July, 1918.
Our Fighting Posters. By Julian Street. Illustrated. McClures Magazine (New York),
July, 1918.
The Story of the War Posters. By H. A. McDonald. Illustrated. Sea Power (New
York), August-November, 1918.
Joseph Pennell’s Liberty Loan Poster. By Joseph Pennell. Illustrated. Philadelphia :
J. B. Lippincott Co., 1918.
Posters Issued by the United States Navy. Illustrated. New York : U. S. Navy Re-
cruiting Bureau, 1918.
Official Posters. United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation. Illus-
trated. Philadelphia : Publications Section, 1918.
The Poster’s Part in the Great War. By Adolph L. Feuerlicht. Illustrated. The
Poster (Chicago), February, 1919.
Camouflage
Notes on Camouflage. By J. Andre Smith. Illustrated. The Architectural Record
(New York), November, 1917.
Nature’s Camouflage and Man’s. By Aymar Embury, II. Illustrations in color by
Charles Livingston Bull. The J\[ew Country Life (Garden City, N. Y.),June, 1918.
Camouflage. By Abbott H. Thayer. The Scientific Monthly (New York), December,
1918.
Marine Camouflage. By Robert Cushman Murphy. Illustrated. Sea Power (New
York), January, 1919.
Marine Camouflage Brought to Perfection in America. By Lindell T. Bates. Illus-
trated. The Sun (New York), 19 January, 1919.
The Science of Camouflage [Marine] Explained. By Raymond Francis Yates. Every'
day Engineering Magazine (New York), March, 1919.
GREAT BRITAIN
Punch Cartoons of the Great War. An album of reproductions. New York :
George H. Doran Co., 1915.
The Western Front. By Muirhead Bone. Two hundred drawings, in ten parts. Lon-
don: Country Life, Ltd., and George Newnes, Ltd.; Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, Page and Co.; New York : George H. Doran Company, 1917.
Modern War. Painting by C. R. W. Nevinson. With an introductory essay by P. G.
Konody. Illustrated. London: Grant Richards, Ltd.; New York: Robert M.
McBride and Co., 1917.
British Artists in the War Zone. Muirhead Bone and James Me Bey. Illustrated.
The International Studio (New York), February, 1917.
Joseph Pennell’s Pictures of War Work in England. With an introduction by
H. G. Wells. Fifty-one plates. London: William Heinemann ; Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1917.
The Great War. Britain’s Efforts and Ideals Depicted by British Artists. By Mal-
colm C. Salaman. Illustrated. The International Studio (New York), October, 1917.
Admirals of the British Navy. Portraits in Colours by Francis Dodd. Illustrated.
New York : George H. Doran Co., N. D.
British Government Exhibition. Official Catalogue [in reality a catalogue of litho-
graphs reflecting Great Britain’s efforts and ideals in the Great War]. Introduction
by James Walter Smith. Illustrated. New York : British Information Bureau, 1918.
The Great War — Fourth Year. Paintings by C. R. W. Nevinson. With an introduc-
tory essay by J. E. Crawford Flitch. Illustrated. London : Grant Richards, Ltd., 1918.
British Artists at the Front, i. C. R. W. Nevinson. With introductions by Camp-
bell Dodgson and C. E. Montague. 2. Sir John Lavery. With introductions by
Robert Ross and C. E. Montague. 3. Paul Nash. With introductions by John Salis
and C. E. Montague. 4. Eric Kennington. W ith introductions by Campbell Dodgson
and C. E. Montague. Each part illustrated with colored plates. London: Country
Life, Ltd., and George Newnes, 1918.
Drawings by James McBey, Official Artist in Palestine. By Malcolm C. Salaman.
Illustrated. The International Studio (New York), March, 1918.
British Artists at the Front. No. i. Sir William Orpen. Caricature, in colors, by
Max Beerbohm. Reveille (London), August, 1918.
The Canadian War Memorials. By P. G. Konody. Illustrated. Colour Magazine (Lon-
don), September, 1918.
Sir William Orpen’s War Pictures. By Sir Frederic Wedmore. Illustrated. The Inter -
national Studio (New York), September, 1918.
Artists at the Front. No. 2. Major Augustus John. Caricature, in colors, by Max
Beerbohm. Reveille (London), November, 1918.
Reproductions of Drawings by Official Australian Artists. The Graphic (London),
14 December, 1918.
War Paintings and Drawings by British Artists. Catalogue. Foreword by Raymond
Wyer. Introduction by Christian Brinton. Illustrated. New York: British Bureau
of Information, 1919.
Artists at the Front. No. 3. John Sargent. Caricature, in colors, by Max Beerbohm.
Reveille (London), February, 1919.
Canadian War Memorials Exhibition. Catalogue. London : Canadian War Records
Office, 1919.
The Great War. Depicted by Distinguished British Artists. Illustrated. London: The
Studio, 1919.
British War Pictures. By Duncan Phillips. Illustrated. The American Magazine of
Art (Washington), March, 1919.
Canadian War Pictures on Exhibition. Illustrated. English Speaking World (New
York), July, 1919.
Dazzle Painting in War-time. By Hugh Hurst. Illustrated. The International Studio
(New York), September, 1919.
FRANCE
Drawings by Official French Artists. Reproduced in L’ Illustration (Paris), 1914-1918.
Quelques Oeuvres du Front. Illustrated. Les Arts (Paris), No. 171 ; 1918.
La Guerre. Par Steinlen. By Camille Mauclair. Illustrated. Numero Special L’Art et
les Artistes (Paris), 1918.
The Heroic Soul of France — Lucien Jonas’ War Lithographs. By Duncan Phillips.
The American Magazine of Art (Washington), October, 1918.
1
THIS book has been set by Bertha M. Goudy from types and
decorations designed by Frederick W. Goudy and printed in
theshop of William E. Rudge, New York City^The engravings
were made by the Beck Engraving Company, New York City.
3 1197 00599 0764
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